Picture #1: Hayao Miyazakis image board illustrating Laputa, a flying castle, for his 1986 animation film Laputa: Castle in the Sky Picture #2: The full view of Laputa from the film Laputa: Castle in the Sky I guess theres no need to answer the question at the end of my previous post. Yes, a well-renowned Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elders masterpiece The Tower of Babel(1563) closely resembles the multi-layered structure of Laputa, the flying castle in Hayao Miyazakis 1986 animation film Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Mr. Miyazaki never clearly mentioned the influence on the Laputas architecture from this particular painting, but its probably because its too obvious. In addition to their visual resemblance, as discussed in the last post, the original story about the Tower of Babel in the Bible may allegorically describe the divine punishment for peoples arrogance and irreverence that come from their technological capability, which basically coincides with the films central theme that Laputan people took advantage of their overwhelming scientific and technological capability but went too far and ruined themselves. Its direct impact is further confirmed by taking a close look at Mr. Miyazakis image board illustrating Laputa at the earliest stage of creating the film. On the upper left corner you can see the title of the figure, or the name of the castle in Japanese katakana, saying ラプュタ, which could be pronounced as Laputa but was later changed to ラピュタ since its more linguistically correct. To its left, however, was written something that has been crossed out, and it can be read as 聖都パベルシュミ, or translated in English as the Holy City of Pabelshumi, which clearly has a linguistic relevance to the word Babel. Although the image board clearly shows us the formative design and the structural model of Laputa, its full view in the film has two significant differences from its original image: A gigantic tree that covers the shrine, and a huge hemisphere on the bottom surface. These additional elements seem to me highly symbolic and clearly indicative of the originality and the creativity of Mr. Miyazaki as an animation film director. In the context of the striking similarity in appearance and concepts to the Tower of Babel, it makes sense that Mr. Miyazaki has drawn the hemisphere as a symbol that represents the highly advanced scientific technology Laputan people achieved, whereas its not straightforward to interpret the meaning of the tree since trees in Mr. Miyazakis films have been known to represent divinity as we have seen in My Neighbor Totoro(1988) and Princess Mononoke(1997). The awe-inspiring tree seems incompatible with the highly artificial hemisphere and doesnt accord well with the concept of the Tower of Babel. Moreover, as you might remember from the film, Laputa looks completely opposite of our typical image of a modern city with improved technology: the place is so peaceful and rich in natural beauty that it looks like a utopia, not at all like a dreaded empire that once ruled the Earth with fearsome technology as described in the film. For a better understanding of the film, we definitely need to consider the meaning of the tree. The image board again offers an important hint, but Ill stop here and keep it for the next post.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 04:39:56 +0000
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