Miyazaki Season: Laputa, Castle in the Sky (Dir Hayao Miyazaki, 2h 6m, 1986)

About halfway through his great satirical work, Jonathan Swift's Lemuel Gulliver, on his third of four increasingly outlandish voyages, is attacked by pirates, and marooned, only to be rescued by the flying island of Laputa, quickly revealled a floating folly of science without practical means and a skewering of Britain's Royal Institution, which Gulliver eventually leaves, to arrive in Japan. Two hundred and sixty years later, a newly created Japanese animation studio, helmed by one of its most formidable talents, would depict a breakneck race against time between pirates, the military, and a charming duo of heroes to discover the flying city (despite Swift's savage Spanish pun), kickstart the nascent steampunk movement, and create what may be the studio's finest action adventure films.

After Nausicaä, Miyazaki wanted to make an action film-hardly a neophyte to the genre,with The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), and two seasons of the fast moving action of Lupin the Third under his belt, not to mention Future Boy Conan (1978), from which Castle in the Sky takes much of its tone, the step forward into a family action adventure film is an unsurprising one. Moreover, as he would recall in his collected Daydream Notes, Miyazaki saw a gap in the market, placing the film as appealing to a slightly younger demographic, one that most of the industry, outside of the omnipresent and staggeringly popular Doraemon (1969-) simply ignored, skewing to older and older audiences , and against the "cool, clear and vivid" Nausicaä, Castle in the Sky would be "fun...(and) intensely thrilling"

Staking out a demographic, in an all-action, all-ages adventure seemed the perfect move for the nascent Ghibli, the "whirlwind" that would blow through anime. Moreover, though, as Miyazaki travelled to Wales, two things struck the director, as he would later recount to the Guardian in 2005: 1984 would see the miner's strike across Britain, and in the early sections of the film, focused around the valley that Pazu and the fellow miners live in, Miyazaki's affection for the country, and its inhabitants shines through. Thematically, the visit's impact would go even deeper-there is a yearning throughout Castle in the Sky of a simpler, gentler age, as much as there is Miyazaki's undeniable excitement at the flying machines and technology of this pseudo-Victorian era.

Castle in the Sky, is, at its heart, a ripping yarn, owing much to Jules Verne: we begin in media res with a striking heist sequence in which a gang of sky pirates, led by Dola (Kotoe Hatsui/Doris Leaching), the first in a long line of older, but by no means powerless female characters that populate Miyazaki's films, attack a transport airship in search of Sheeta (Keiko Yokozawa/Anna Paquin), the bearer of a mysterious magic crystal that is rumoured to lead to the nigh-mythical floating island of Laputa, a veritable El Dorado of riches and knowledge. However, Sheeta herself escapes the clutches of the film's antagonist (and the closest Miyazaki ever gets to a one-note villain), Muska (Minori Terada/a scene-stealing Mark Hamill), plummeting from the side of the airship to slowly descend to earth as her crystal shows its powers.

She is soon found by Pazu (Mayumi Tanaka/James Van Der Beek), an orphan who works for the boss of the miners, and so their adventures together begin. The opening half hour of Castle in the Sky are not merely a perfect cinematic experience, as Sheeta and Pazu get to know each other after her fall from the sky, and their budding friendship, and shared quest for Laputa, immediately put to the test by the arrival of Dola's gang and Muska's forces, but a technical masterclass from Ghibli. To consider Nausicaä and Castle in the Sky are a mere two years apart is astounding-the jump in animation quality is incomparable, and whilst Ghibli's ranks were bolstered by a (comparatively) colossal budget of $3 million and several studios assisting on in-between work, Castle in the Sky's animation work is where Ghibli's true style appears. This is where Ghibli's legendary, oft-imitated, never replicated mastery of the animated form arrives in full force.

Here, Miyazaki's love of flying machines is on full display-the Dola gang's gliders, and home airship, the Tiger Moth, have a rough and ready quality, the ship they attack like a passenger liner, and the colossal, and Breugel-esque bulk of Laputa, only seen at this point in brief, fleeting glimpse-but Ghibli, and Miyazaki go further. If Nausicaä is a quiet, thought-provoking film, Laputa is a beautiful, sweeping one, with the title sequence taking place over a history, in exquisite quasi-woodcut style, of the flying castles' history and eventual doom, whilst, when the Dola gang appear in town, their inevitable brawl with the townsfolk is exaggerated, and comic, their movements, expressions and larger than life personalities like pages of the best manga brought to life.

This is to say nothing of the evocative backgrounds, filled with detail, evoking everywhere from hulking military installations and windswept valleys to detritus strewn kitchens, cloudscapes, and the exterior (and eventually interior) of Laputa itself that further marked out Ghibli's intent. Against this statement of intent from the animators, Joe Hisashi's score falls into place like the final piece of an intricate jigsaw, swapping experimental textures for the lush, if still synthesiser driven score (although Castle in the Sky is still best seen with Disney's no-expenses-spared symphonic score that accompanies the second, and most easily available dub). On full display in both scores is Hisaishi as the master composer, from the delicate piano led "Girl Who Fell from the Sky" to the sole trumpet on "Morning of Slag Valley", to the eerie beauty, and quasi-requiem of "Destruction of Laputa", and it is here, undeniably, that the Miyazaki/Hisaishi partnership truly begins.

But this is rather missing the castle for the sky. Castle in the Sky's greatest work of genius is in its pacing, the chops of the action movie, like everything else in the film, executed at maximum precision and uttermost heart. There is not a wasted second in the middle third of the film after Sheeta and Pazu are captured by Muska and his forces. We learn more about Laputa itself, from Sheeta's past and connection to Laputa, including a robot that to her horror, crawls from the basement to protect her and lay waste to the fortress in which they are both kept. Pazu's guilt at being sent away by Sheeta to protect him and kidnap by the Dola gang gives way to Sheeta's rescue, and daring do, and the crew's race against time to reach Laputa before the military.

Our heroes are sweet and sincere; Pazu is heartbroken that he cannot protect Sheeta, Sheeta's sorrow at the loss of the robot in protecting her is genuinely moving, and their excitement at reaching the castle is palpable as it is contagious. Hisashi's score is at stirring as it comes, the animators are faultless, especially with the arrival of Goliath, a truly colossal airship, and the Laputian robot to the fare, and the discovery of the floating Island, and its treasures is a sequence that Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli may never again match in pure excitement, nor in beauty, as our heroes marvel at how nature has overtaken the once-proud civilisation, one of Miyazaki's great defining themes meeting another.

But if Castle in the Sky has one fault, it is that perhaps Sheeta and especially Pazu are occasionally too much of an audience surrogate-earnest and typically Ghibli-esque heroes they may be, but they're overshadowed by their supporting cast, from the crew of the Tiger Moth, including Dola and her engineer husband who give the film a little bit of offbeat energy from start to finish, to Muska, the closest Hayao Miyazaki has ever come to a truly irredeemable villain, who, via Mark Hamill in fine form, steals every scene he's in, as he unfurls his plan, and true connection to Laputa before our heroes and the audience, in barely restrained cackling villainy. He is a Boys Own Matinee Serial villain for a film that perfectly captures that sensibility, although, to compare it to that other great homage to the action serial is to mistake action setpieces for Miyazaki's mastery of a far gentler, storybook-style atmosphere.

Castle in the Sky is a gentle film, despite all its airship battles and colossal destruction in its finale, a film of beautiful and quiet moments-the true treasure aboard Laputa is not gold, nor wealth, but the colossal tree that grows into the sky from, and far from being a bustling powerhouse of military and intellectual might, it is little more than a quiet grave for an age that once was, tended over, in the film's single most beautiful moment, by the last of the robots that once defended it. It is an invocation, an evocation of a simpler, gentler age, an imagined Victoriana of voyages into the unknown, of daring heroes taking to the sky to battle villainous men intent on taking over the world.

Hardly surprisingly, Castle in the Sky remains perhaps Miyazaki's most influential work in his native Japan and beyond, the favourite Ghibli film of figures as far apart as Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii and Your Name director Makoto Shinkai. Its longevity is undeniable either as beloved childhood classic, one of its screenings on Japanese broadcaster NHK eliciting the most tweets ever in a single second at the peak of the film's finale, or as unmistakable influence, best seen in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, an even more Vernian work of two children, one carrying a magical blue crystal, written, of course, by Miyazaki himself, and directed by another familiar figure-Hideaki Anno, a former Topcraft animator.

That Castle in the Sky proved Ghibli's whirlwind through anime was more than hot air is undeniable, but the film was more than simply a proving ground for a studio making their first picture. Castle in the Sky is at once one of the best animated action adventure films ever made, an unmistakable influence on its medium and beyond, a marvellous fantastical chase to find a seemingly mythical city, and a nigh unmatchable piece of cinema, a towering, staggering statement of intent, a studio rising into view to stake out their claim, their castle, among clouds and dreams of adventure.

Rating: Must See

Next week, A more sedate pace, and a charming adventure in rural 1950s Japan as we're off to meet Ghibli's most famous character of all, My Neighbour Totoro!

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