LAPUTA (Castle In The Sky)
Possibly one the best Anime films ever to hit the screens. Created by Hayao Miyazaki from Japan, who also gave us the fabulous Princess Mononoke, the story tells straightforwardly of two children caught up in the highly adventurous search for Laputa, the Castle In The Sky, as referred to in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift.
On the way they encounter pirates, a gravity defying gemstone, a race of giant robots who could give Gort, (of The Day The Earth Stood Still fame a run for his money, and seem very close relatives of The Iron Giant) and the Army of a madman who wants to rule Earth using the Flying Castle's formidable armoury.
The pirates are a joy to watch, flying against the film's many airships on airborne metallic insect pods like flying motorcycle side-cars. Some of the sequences with them chasing the heroes are straight from a Chaplin/Keaton movie, particularly the big fight scene when the strongest of the pirates takes on the leader of the local mining community who's wife stands behind them with a frying pan under her arm moaning about the typical machismo on display and telling her husband off for ruining his shirt. Later, captured by the pirates and briefly becoming pirates themselves, the heroine is sent to do galley work on the pirate flagship. The stronger pirate, clearly captivated by her, sneaks into the galley to see her, when he should also be working and finds the others there, all put to work cutting veg, peeling spuds, etc, as she takes over the whole enterprise, and he too finds himself reduced to kitchen chores.
But what delights precede it do nothing to prepare you for the awesome beauty of the flying castle itself, with its gentle graveyard tended by a robot and the sheer beauty of the place, rock supported on roots of hundreds of trees, as it glides over and by, until almost destroyed by the main villain, but ultimately all will be well. Wonderful stuff.
Arthur Chappell
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