Movie Thoughts: Castle in the Sky

Ref: Castle in the Sky

Now for the record, this isn’t going to be a review this will just be a thoughts on symbolism, metaphors and just anecdotes piece lol (it’s been a while).

Watching this movie made me cry, a lot actually and for many reasons storywise but it also gave me so much nostalgia, so much kind-of sadness and longing for my past.  Miyazaki’s works have always given me this feeling, even as a child, so I was never able to completely watch all of his works because of this sadness that I would have.  There’s something about it that makes me think very deeply about my life and my existence and it’s so weird, but that’s a very personal problem (probably lol).

I think that the story was beautiful and the entire magic realm of what Laputa is and what Laputa represents is fascinating to me.  The concept of a castle in the sky, especially at the time, was very magical and very very fantastic that to even just think about a story like this would’ve been a bit challenging maybe.  

Now there are two different ways that I’d love to go off on what laputa means and what it represents and the first way is to represent the earth as a whole.  

Laputa represents the world and it’s beauty, just on it’s own, and as human beings, we take advantage of this magical world, we destroy it and we ruin it with all of our ego and our power hungry ideals and whatever else.  Without humans, I feel like the world would’ve been a better place, what we take and what we give to the earth is not balanced; we take more than we give and we care less about that fact.  We as human beings are terrible creatures, terrible to ourselves, terrible to the creatures around us, and terrible to the home, the earth, that we live on.  It’s so magical what green spaces hold, the life that walks in it and thrives in it, it’s a very amazing world and how cruel we are to it all (that sort of mentality).  

My second turn is one for the boys back home, just noting that Muska and everyone else has very western features, I’d say that it could represent western colonization on eastern countries / lands in general, this forcibly taking over someone’s beautiful land, it’s vividly expressed in ways where it moves you to tears seeing how broken apart it starts out and how MORE broken up and destroyed it has to be to get free from their grip.  

Some notable things that I found interesting about the story itself: the concept of laputa on it’s own, just the majestic land itself and how beautiful the substory of the robots is (I cried so badly at that part), this constant search for laputa was interesting to me as well because I saw it as a metaphor for human beings.  In many ways, we’re always trying to look for the world’s better thing, we’re always trying to be more successful, more rich, more powerful, etc etc etc and for this wondrous land to exist is amazing and awesome but you know that humans will just take advantage of that.  It’s a very sad and unfortunate fact of human beings, just in general.  

Anyways, but yes I very much loved the movie.  I loved the pairing, I thought it was super cute, emotionally moving and well made, I’m just in awe with the detailed world and everything, the soundtrack was amazing as well!!