Film: Tales From Earthsea
Release date: 28th January 2008
Certificate: PG
Running time: 110 mins
Director: Goro Miyazaki
Starring: Junichi Okada, Aoi Teshima, Bunta Sugawara, Yûko Tanaka, Teruyuki Kagawa
Genre: Anime
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Many have courted Ursula Le Guin for the rights to create a film out of her collection of fantasy stories about wizards and dragons from the land known as Earthsea, yet only Hayao Miyazaki was granted this honour. However, the anime director was busy working on another adaptive work, Howl’s Moving Castle, so, on behalf of Studio Ghibli, the challenge was taken up by his son, Gorō Miyazaki, for his directorial debut.
The captain of a boat caught in the midst of a ferocious storm summons his weatherworker to calm the tempest, yet the mage, upon arrival on deck, realises he no longer remembers the true names of the elements to control them. Yet his disposition becomes increasingly concerned when from the sky two dragons emerge fighting each other. The weatherworker claims that dragons fighting each other is an impossibility, but must look on helplessly as one falls slain into the ocean below.
The king, informed of the happening, is equally puzzled and concerned, while he must also deal with the unnatural drought and disease that is sweeping through his domain. He asks his wizard to look into the problem. The wizard suggests 'the balance' is enervating, before recounting how men and dragons were once one, until men, who desired possessions, took the earth and sea, while those who craved their freedom over everything else took fire and air and became the winged creatures.
After being warned of his son’s suspicious and unusual behaviour, the king leaves his advisors to attend to his correspondents and, in a darkened corridor, is attacked by Prince Arren, who kills him and steals his sword before fleeing into the night. Shortly thereafter, we see the young prince fleeing a band of wolves in the desert. Unable to release the sword from its sheath, and without a steed to escape, he awaits his death, while a mysterious cloaked figure watches the melee…
It is easy to understand why so many have been interested in putting the author’s magical world onto the big screen. With twelve stories, of varying lengths, to amalgamate a plot from, coupled with a vast array of mythical creatures and magical schools to explore and utilise, it should whet the appetite of any creative mind. That Studio Ghibli should be the ones Le Guin chose as the recipients of her endorsement, again, is logical, as few other anime studios have shown such imagination and fantastical ingenuity in this particular genre. However, what was unprecedented was that Hayao Miyazaki, who had expressed interest in creating an animated version ever since his first production of Nausicaa in 1984, should forgo such an opportunity. Instead of waiting until the completion of Howl’s Moving Castle, he gave his son the opportunity to prove his worth. While Tales From Earthsea harbours many of the key ingredients one comes to expect from a Ghibli production, it also contains a few worrying additions as well.
With so many of the production members at Ghibli involved with the senior Miyazaki’s work, Gorō’s direction, without an elderly statesman to guide him, veers from one extreme to the other. He has inherited his father’s eye for the cinematic, as the sweeping scenescapes are grandiose, lavish, with vibrant and unusual colours supported by a suitably evocative Celtic score from Tamiya Terashima. Yet, perhaps due to the restricted budget Gorō had to operate with, the detail of the characters, and the landscape in sequences not devoted to the panoramic, are neither as crisp nor as refined as other Ghibli works. While certain aspects are not solely the director’s fault, it is unavoidable comparisons will be drawn, spoilt as we have been by the animation studio.
Where Gorō perhaps needed aide more than any other area is in compressing such a vast quantity of detail into an accessible and plausibly engaging script. As Le Guin’s world is an ever-evolving, interlinked sequence of tales, with each leading into and referencing another, Gorō has borrowed bits and pieces from various segments and mixed them together with the basic plot from The Farthest Shore, the series’ third instalment. What results in purely cinematic terms is a garbled mess of characters who recite passages with no justification or background as to why they are being said or what motivates them. This chopping and changing of method with madness leaves a narrative that stagnates and characters that are not allowed to flourish. There is never a continuing thread that runs throughout Tales From Earthsea, so it lacks continuity. Too much is posed to the viewer then left unfulfilled, or unexplained. Why does Prince Arren suffer from lapses in control of his body? Who or what is his doppelganger? Why and how do the characters that come into contact with each other know each other? What is Sparrowhawk’s history?
With adaptations, the director must assume that no one knows of any prior media’s existence, and work solely on the premise that his is the only format the viewing public is aware of. If audience members are left to wonder what on middle-earth just happened, it is impossible to conclude anything other than failure.
Because of the fusion of too many of the stories from the Earthsea novelised saga, too much is lost and not enough is concise in being able to drive forward the narrative or any character development. Individuals are presented and never expanded upon, or allowed to grow into more than the sum of their parts, mainly because we’re not privy as to what their goals are, or what it is they wish to achieve. Arren’s relationship with the mysterious girl Therru should be the emotional driving force of the film, yet due to a lack of focus, the relationship is devoid of the sentimentality required to stir the audience. The central sixty minutes, which should be the cornerstone for creating and resolving internal conflict, or where we begin to see individuals’ emotions and feelings fluctuate as they charge resolutely toward their target, merely screens as a turgid exercise in narcolepsy.
It is harsh to be overly critical of a director on debut, and perhaps, as Ursula Le Guin suggests, this is the result of too much responsibility being shouldered by “someone not equipped for it." The Earthsea chronicles are vast and heavily interlocked with history and detail that cinema cannot hope to compress into two. There is plenty to suggest Gorō has talent, particularly in the magical action sequences, which flow excellently with a sense of menace and visual spellbinding. However, this style cannot hope to compensate for the gaping lack of substance in those created to engage the audience. Gorō was left to the wolves in this regard. With no guiding hand and too much source material to trawl through to develop an engaging narrative, too much was expected of such a young man, and in the critical aftermath of this film, too many have distanced themselves from him. The studio, as a whole, should accept responsibility for the failings of Tales From Earthsea, particularly producer Toshio Suzuki (who recommended him for the post), yet it is Gorō’s credibility that remains tarnished; dubiously earning himself the Worst Director and Worst Director awards at Japan's Bunshun Kiichigo Awards (Japan's version of the Golden Raspberry Awards) for this ramshackle outing.
While Tales From Earthsea is not as bad as many have made it out to be, with sufficient material to sate the fantasy enthusiasts and the Ghibli fan-base, events have conspired against the young Miyazaki. His father, Hayao Miyazaki, walked out of the initial screening halfway through to much publicity, before the author Ursula Le Guin commented that the adaptation had been a disappointment. While there is plenty at fault with Tales From Earthsea, from clunky direction that fails to provide coherency to confused and often-lifeless characters, it is because of whom Goro is son of, and not the cinematic deficiencies, that many are unfairly hypercritical of this Ghibli entry. BL
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