Cinema’s friendship with magic is not a new phenomenon. Since the first public screening, cinema has begun to be seen as a magical invention in itself, as a means of convincing audiences to alternative worlds.

-I feel terrible, as if I am stuck under a stone.

-Yes, heart is a heavy burden..[1]

Cinema’s friendship with magic is not a new phenomenon. Since the first public screening, cinema has begun to be seen as a magical invention in itself, as a means of convincing audiences to alternative worlds. With the possibilities provided by technological innovations, over time, cinema has transformed into a dazzling magic machine indeed. As each movie you build a new universe in your own life, all the audience should do was to decide in which world they want to breath. Well, that was good too; we were able to knock the gates of the magnificent universes like Hayao Miyazaki. If you have watched any Miyazaki movies and you are reading this text, you cannot help reminding that there is no door to knock at all. Sure, you will tell the truth. Because in the magical universe of Miyazaki cinema all good intentions are on the priority list. Before you knock the door, the whole world will be unfolded, and you just need to head off ... In the magical world of Miyazaki’s cinema, everything is at the best position; Miyazaki's cinema is beyond the dreams of Oğuz Atay, stating “there must be a door that opens to you without asking anything ..." let us keep in mind that we speak of a sincerity, a refreshment, a wishful thinking ...

Adapted from Diana Wynne Jones's same named book, the movie of The Moving Castle (2004) is also among precious works of Miyazaki’s universe. The film by Studio Ghibli was scripted by Reiko Yoshida, and since the first screening, it has been the focus of intense interest of audience. So, it has earned considerable financial success and a number of awards and nominations. The story in short is like this: Sophie Hatter is a poor young girl who has lost her father and has to work. Neither she finds herself beautiful, nor she has the courage to develop high expectations for her life. She deals with hat decorations throughout the day at the hat shop, which she runs with her stepmother. Sophie's closest friends are also these hats; sometimes they see her upset and comfort her, sometimes she shares her own troubles. One day, as she goes to visit her sister Lettie, who works at bakery in the city centre, this calm, unpretentious but a bit of a buzzing life goes through a big change. Sophie, makes the Witch of Waste angry but she is unconscious that she did so, and then she is exposed to the wrath of the witch: Se is an old, rascal-faced woman who cannot walk without a walking stick now. Interestingly, this would lead to direct suicide of any woman, as it is not the case that Sophie did not worry about this as much as she does when her hair sheds in the morning when she brushed.

Sophie does not find being old weird, but she falls on the roads and tries to get rid of the spell, because it will not be possible to stay in the shop and continue to work. Rest of the story tells Sophie's inner transformation during this journey. On the way, Sophie’s story of being hired as a maid to Howl’s castle, then becoming a member of the household and finally becoming the lady of the house, and the people she met throughout her journey are narrated in a colourful and gamesome plot. When all this happens, Sophie turns into a well-intentioned young woman who has wisely completed her soul and has crowned her with love, and represents a strong will to help transform other characters with her. Whoever in any way is involved in Sophie's circle of love and compassion, take their chance on this change wind. Sophie Hatter is like an angel of magic goodness that gives life to the ones she touches, but it is her pure love to Howl that reveals her power, stimulates her will, brings depth to her looks, brings youth to her soul, and an abstract taste and power to her language.

The deep gap in Howl's lonely heart was filled with the bad feelings from his early ages, that Miyazaki often criticizes these feelings in his films. Feelings such as selfishness, ambition, materialism dragged Howl into a vast despair pit. Handsome, charismatic, powerful, intelligent, and a lot more qualities he has, transformed into bonds that capturing his life and caused him to entrust his heart to a fire genie. Howl has become a successful and famous wizard using his talents and intelligence, however this reputation sometimes wanders around, forcing him to do things he does not want. Being a soldier for the wars of others, getting along with the political authority and constantly living a fugitive life ... If you are a charming and charismatic man, it does not provide any benefit except for becoming emotionless enough to forget what true love is. Moreover, these features made him so fragile that he will weep for hours because of some dribble shadows. To sum up, Howl is suffering much worse than the spell Sophie has been suffering.

Miyazaki followers will immediately notice that this reference is a clear critique of capitalism. It is among the most prominent themes of Miyazaki's films that in this heartless system which creates materialistic, egoistic individuals and that glorifying these temporary characteristics abases an individual. Howl's passionate personality in the Moving Castle also makes all these criticisms tangible and satirises all these characteristics in his personality. Howl's helplessness, on the other hand, is also a part of this criticism. Because Howl reveals the most miserable sides of this heartless world. It is important for Sophie to reach Howl's secret in time. Behind the brilliant, merciless, glorious face of capitalism, it is a structure that devours itself and brutalises everything around it as well as itself. To see this, it is necessary to look a little more closer and to be wise. Sophie has this potential to be wise because she has a heart that does not tire her even when she is trapped in an old body. But the wisdom that will provide her to perceive the nature of events will only be acquired with experience. This experience is a gift to be earned after an adventure, a booty to be acquired after an inner struggle. So, the protagonist of this adventure, which constitutes almost the complete movie, must be Sophie.

It's hard to get an unknown adventure for a shy and introverted character like Sophie. Fortunately, a strong cloud of love that can stimulate even the most humble and cowardly spirits wraps her soul, convinces her to go on the way she will never go, and to deal with works she will never do. Thus, Sophie and gain permanent power and gain strength in the way of wisdom (sophia), as well as offering a solution that would save a whole world from the hands of a heartless fire gin. This is such an effective treatment method that has the power to heal even the fire gin. For this reason, it is directly expressed in Calcifer's language that Sophie is the only person who can disrupt the treaty between Calcifer and the magician Howl in the film. If someone else takes Howl’s heart from Calcifer, that would kill them both but when Sophie does this it turns into an action that frees both Calcifer and revives and humanizes Howl again. However, in order for Sophie to be able to perform this life-giving action, she must have achieved wisdom she should be get rid of the ill-intended and devastated heart. This aspect, which implies that pure goodness cannot be enough to solve such complicated problems, is reinforced by Howl's awareness of the situation since the beginning, although Sophie cannot speak about the spell she has been suffering, as a part of the spell. Howl does not explain that he knows Sophie’s secret, even though he knows that she is not an old woman, as it actually appears, but a teenager in her 18. Because Sophie is actually using her age as an armour for excuse, and Howl does not want to reveal this armour because he knows that his own salvation depends on her struggle. Even Calcifer hides from Sophie that she can easily turn back to her original form easily. But they both use a few little tricks because they want Sophie to leave this armour with her own and move faster. These tricks are such as bringing Sophie to the shop where she used to work and reminding her of her past so that her journey would blow her away, for not allowing her armour to become stagnant by adopting it as part of her own self ...

All this will help to reveal that Sophie is actually a more powerful wizard than all of them. Sophie, even when she is not aware of it, actually possesses magical powers and can influence the material. She will use her will for righteousness and beauty when she is aware of her power. It can be argued that the movie is fatalistic from this perspective. Howl’s stating that he knew that Sophie was the one since the beginning, but he waited for the end of her change process and revealed no secrets at all, in the scene where he saved Sophie from the hands of the soldiers, even though it is not explained how and why this opinion emerge, that Sophie accepts easily what happened as soon as she went to Witch of Waste and embark on a journey, that things she encounter on the roads do not cause big surprises, and more show that the characters prefer to stay calm and insist on correct attitude rather than panicking when they face some incidents that are outside their wills. That is, the given characteristics such as the flow of events or coming to the world as the first child of the family are a part of fate; the decisions made by the characters under these circumstances and the insistence in these decisions represent the will.

At this point, the adventure gets away from being just Sophie's personal development and transformational adventure, rather it becomes a comprehensive adventure that surrounds all the characters. Although Sophie appears to be the protagonist in this adventure, everyone has a share in the development of events and everyone has different characteristics than you see. In fact, often everything is the opposite of what it looks like: Sophie's scarecrow named Turnip Head is not scary, but Howl, who is known as a heartless sorcerer, is actually quite merciful and even the Witch of Waste is not bad ... This is a universe where everyone who will participate in the struggle of good and the evil and the ones attending the good will be respected and everyone needs each other's helping hand. There is no category above good or bad here, as the only condition for everyone to be happy is goodness to win, and as in all the Miyazaki films, the struggle between good and evil is the main focus of the movie in the Moving Castle.

The most basic element that Miyazaki adds to the story is that it is the foreground of this struggle and it crystallizes the issue that the book touches more relative to the edge. There is also a difference between the book and the movie in terms of fiction. For example, in the book Sophie has a second sister named Martha, and there is also another well-intentioned witch which Martha is sent to. The name of the Witch of Waste is the Witch od Desert in fact, and Howl is fighting actually against the witch and the gin who the witch covenanted. In the movie Howl's struggle with the witch moves to the background after a while, and he fights with the palace which named Suliman because of the fact that he did not accepting the offer of working together in the war. While Howl's sister and his family are involved in the movie, this is not mentioned in the movie at all. These differences, which allow one who is both the reader of the book and the viewer of the movie to see two different versions of the same story and it does not harm the essence of the story.

At this point, we can say that many of the changes in the film prepared the room for emphasising two points which give the tone of Miyazaki. It seems that Miyazaki is trying to simplify them in order to transform heroes into goodness fighters, as well as to replace the event from a fragmentation and deepen it. In this way, the ground for the dialogues has been set up which enables him to highlight the points, a structure has been established which can carry strong expressions such as "Monkey's appetitive heart is the only thing that will not change in this world", "The brightest light will be at the time of disaster", "Heart is a heavy burden" as well as a romantic climate that will provide the emotional passage of these messages. In other words, a genuine love as the most important motivation of those who fight for the good-evil struggle and the good for this struggle is placed in the centre of the movie. Thus, there emerged a magical fairy tale that reminded both the young and the elderly that they could watch it again and again and that they had a good heart and that they should take care of it. So much so that at the end of the movie you can hardly stop yourself from going after the moving castle which is being flown by Calcifer without requiring any agreements with its own will.

Bibliography

Yürüyen Şato. Yön. Hayao Miyazaki. Tokyo: Studio Ghibli, 2004.