SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Though it offers some pretty sights, Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea keeps viewers at arms’ length with an oddly detached and restrained approach to sword and sorcery fantasy.
Though it’s often overlooked by audiences, quite a few of Studio Ghibli’s films are actually adaptations. Of these, I have no doubt that Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea is both the oddest and the worst, for reasons that will hopefully become clear. On paper, an adaptation of a hugely popular series of fantasy novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, often regarded as one of science fiction’s leading writers, by an animation studio well-known for turning out cinematic gold, is a fantastic idea. But the end result is almost devoid of the charm and grace that Ghibli is known for, leaving behind a vacuous fantasy film that’s mostly competent but thoroughly uninspired. I started this film waiting for the moment in which I’d finally get lost, swept away on a new adventure. But when the credits eventually roll two hours later, the promise of grand adventure goes largely unfulfilled.
It’s hard to pin down exactly what type of adaptation Tales of Earthsea is. Perhaps it’s best described as a condensation of the first four novels of the book series, but not in their entirety, with certain elements of character and plot changed or even removed entirely. I can’t really comment on its faithfulness since I’ve never read the books, but we’ll get to why that isn’t a problem soon enough. As the title suggests, this film is set in the fantasy world of Earthsea, where we follow the exiled prince Arren on his journeys with the travelling wizard Sparrowhawk. The world’s balance has been upset for reasons unknown and Sparrowhawk wants to find out why.
Although it’s an entirely adequate sword-and-sorcery tale, I get the impression that Miyazaki had no clue what to do with the source material. There were seemingly no clear answers as to what parts of Le Guin’s work to use, and how best to explore its lore and discuss its story concepts. A full page-to-scene adaptation of four whole books wasn’t possible, and so he tried for a looser adaptation that required substantial mixing of the source material. The end result is a jumble of plotlines set in a world that, despite a healthy amount of exposition, still doesn’t make much sense, and featuring one-dimensional characters whose motivations and backstories are largely unclear. I could watch Tales of Earthsea and get the gist of what’s going on and how the story progressed, but some of the finer details and references were entirely lost on me. Certain aspects of the story go unresolved, unexplained or both.
I didn’t feel left out because I hadn’t read the books. I felt like I was almost being punished for not having done so. It’s well worth noting that Le Guin herself was disappointed, stating that the filmmakers “treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency.” I share that opinion, and although I could say much about this movie, her words more than adequately sum up my own impressions of the story. Enough said.
Setting aside issues of character, consistency and plotline, one question remains: does it at least look good? While there are undoubtedly some lush visuals and impressive sequences, as you might expect from Studio Ghibli, these are all disappointingly conventional. It was only on rare occasions that I actually felt present in the world the film created. With fantasy films, you want to find yourself so caught up in their settings that you temporarily forget about the real world. For much of Tales of Earthsea, I felt like a distant observer and kept at arms’ length. I’m sure Earthsea is a truly vibrant place as it exists in the imagination, but its depiction here is somewhat spoiled. The film performs its various obligations in a dour, humourless fashion, soldiering on without pausing to give its characters and world room to breathe. In her response, Le Guin writes of the film “I hope to put it behind me.” As a Studio Ghibli fan, I share in that sentiment.
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