Film: Tales from Earthsea

[vilakins]

The international film festival started today, and we went to see the Ghibli Studio's Tales from Earthsea (AKA Gedo Senki in Japan). I enjoyed it, as I do all of Ghibli's films, for their stunning animations and strong female characters. This one was made by the master Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro. Of course he played around with the plot (loosely based on the third and fourth books of the Earthsea series, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu) as his father did with Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, but to quote Le Guin when Goro Miyazaki asked her what she thought, "It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie." I agree: Ghibli are masters of their art and I enjoyed it in its own right.

I do have some reservations: Arren's actions at the beginning are never adequately explained, and the balance between light and dark, life and death, is talked about a lot but never really shown. What caused the imbalance and was it corrected at the end, and how? Also, none of the characters seemed the red-brown they should have been to me. (Tenar of course was blonde, correctly, being a Karg, and I liked that she was stocky and real-looking). By the standards of anime however, they were apparently relatively dark (shades of beige and tan) and would appear so to Japanese viewers.

[Edit] The US will not get to see this until 2009 because the TV miniseries still holds the rights to the property there. (As Le Guin says, "there are dogs in the manger".) They can buy the DVD from Madman in Australia though (and I can rec them; we've bought from them).

Comments

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly a raving fan of the Earthsea books, but I do like Miyazaki. Seems like it's been done better this time than the execrable Earthsea (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407384/) from a couple of years ago.

[quarryquest.livejournal.com]

I would agree on that. I am more a fan of Earthsea than I am of Harry Potter but I wish the Harry Potter people have done the Earthsea mini-series as it went rather off the point!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I heard it was totally OOC and they changed the whole plot and feel--and the people were all white. I don't think I've heard a single good thing about it.

[quarryquest.livejournal.com]

The stuff up to Ged getting out of school was relatively true to form (but yes they apart from Ogion were white). The rest of it was totally daft however and they completely rewrote part containing the story from the Tombs of Atuan.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd say much better from what I've heard. This is by Goro Miyazaki (Hayao was making Howl's Moving Castle) but I've enjoyed every Ghibli film I've seen whether by a Miyazaki or not. I'd certainly rec it. :-)

I haven't read the older Earthsea books since I was a teenager, and the newer ones not at all. I must rectify that.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the review.

I saw a trailer for Stardust, which is based on a story by Neil Gaiman, yesterday. It looked as though it might be very good.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen a trailer, but that sounds good. And it has Peter O'Toole in probably his last appearance; I always enjoy him on screen.