TALES FROM EARTHSEA
In reviews of this film it is inevitable that Goro Miyazaki will face comparisons with his father, the legendary Hayao. But they were never going to be favourable. Tales of Earthsea is an ambitious project for even an accomplished director, with continuity and complexity issues which more than dwarf those that dogged the mediocre Golden Compass, or Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films for that matter. The deep inner worlds and stark representations of good and evil that inhabit Ursula Le Guin's world of Earthsea were, in my view, a step too far for the young man with big shoes to fill.
The film, like the first book, opens with a ship at sea, tossed by raging storms. Through his inability to calm the storm a wizard realises his powers are failing, and then they witness two dragons fighting - a terrible portent of things to come at Earthsea. From this dark opening we are thrust into the heart of the kingdom of Enlad where a young Prince Arren inexplicably murders his father, the king, and runs off with his sword. All this before the opening titles! Arren, fleeing the evil within him, has the good fortune to come across Archmage Sparrowhawk, a mysterious and softly spoken wizard who is engaged in seeking the cause of the strange ocurrences in Earthsea. Their journey leads them through a range of towns, (lacking the spectacular scenery of many earlier Ghibli forays), populated with strange merchants and evil slave-traders. The latter turn our to be connected to the source of the trouble in Earthsea sought by Sparrowhawk and Arren: an evil mage named Cob with whom Arren is eerily connected, and with whom a final showdown will decide the fate of the land.
The storytelling is slow and fragmented, and there are a few unexplaied elements. Plotwise, we are never given an explanation for Sparrowhawk taking in Arren, and the close bond that develops between them doesn't come across at any point in the build up. In terms of the underlying meanings and debates on the nature of life and death that course through Le Guin's tales, which are the true life-blood of this film, the audience isn't really initiated into the key components of the language and are thus left slightly in the dark. In particular it is never made clear why an object's 'true name' is important. A brief speech by Sparrowhawk is supposed to suffice, but in fact all it does is pique a little curiosity in one of many unnecessary unveventful scenes inserted to give the audience a sense of the passage of time in what is actually a long quest for the protagonists.
Perhaps this is the greatest success of the film. In watching it I felt like I had sat for an age. But this isn't really a good thing. The fragmented narrative precluded any character identification and grossly neglected the interesting history and character offered by Sparrowhawk, (whose life before the tale begins is charted in detail in Le Guin's other Earthsea books), and the scenes where the action did happen were milked for all they were worth. Nonetheless there were positives. The film didn't shy away from the willingness of the original story to portray unambiguous, uncaveated evil, and there were some genuinely well-made and visually stunning scenes which encapsulated the rich philosophical discourse of its source material, and reflected the accomplished animation of studio Ghibli, even if the sparsity of such scenes show that this is far from the masterpieces produced in the past. So if you do give Tales From Earthsea a chance don't expect the carefully crafted narrative genius of this burgeoning director's great father, but keep your mind open to it's quiet philosophising and i'm sure you'll take something from it.
rating: 2.5
Tales From Earthsea is out on DVD in the UK on 28th of January.