It’s a daunting task to direct Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animation legend behind The Boy and the Heron and much more. However, the Pakistani production of The Glassworker goes beyond simply imitating Miyazaki’s signature style. It gets to the heart of the anti-war sentiment that underlies much of his work — and the work of Studio Ghibli more broadly, including “Grave of the Fireflies” director Isao Takahata — resulting in a film that, like many Ghibli productions, feels like a film. Once familiar and new.
The Glassworker is the directorial debut of Usman Riaz, the first fully hand-drawn feature film in Pakistan, and was created by Mano Animation Studios under the supervision of Ghibli producer Jeffrey Wexler. Miyazaki’s sensibility practically runs through the film’s veins, starting with its setting: a vibrant early 20th-century city called Waterfront designed with a mix of European and Asian (in this case, Pakistani) influences. Its buildings are in the Dutch Renaissance style, while its characters – ethnically diverse, dressed in Western Islamic and South Asian garb – all speak Urdu. Moreover, the city’s attractive comfort conflicted with the rise of industry and the widespread manufacture of military weapons.
Most of the story unfolds in childhood memories, though it begins when young Vincent Oliver (Timur “Moro” Salahuddin) reads letters sent to him from afar from his first love and former schoolmate, Alize (Maryam Riad Paracha). Vincent now runs the glassblowing workshop and storefront run by his strict but conscientious father, Thomas (Khaled Anam). However, Vincent was only a teenage trainee (voiced by Mahom Muazzam in flashback) when he first laid eyes on the younger Alise (still voiced by Paracha), who had moved to their town when her father, military commander Colonel Amano (Brig. Riad has been deployed there to manage the coming war against an enemy we rarely see.
The political details of “The Glassblower” are left largely ambiguous, partly because Watertown is a fictional amalgam of many cultures (it’s set in a world where airships rule), but partly because this conflict is seen through the eyes of children. This is perhaps the film’s most distinctive feature of Ghibli, but the simplicity also helps get the film’s point across. Even as the story of innocent childhood romance moves toward greater complexity, The Glassman remains uninterested in geopolitical detail — or even metaphors — preferring an intimate approach to the way war stirs the soul.
Glass plays a very important role in weapon building in this conflict (or perhaps that’s what Vincent remembers, since glassmaking is his world), which prompts Colonel Amano to ask Thomas for help, despite the craftsman being practically an outcast for being a pacifist. During wartime. Riyad captures Thomas’ dilemma with aplomb, turning it into a defining, larger-than-life event through Vincent’s eyes and the first of many ugly moments that weigh heavily on the young boy’s heart.
The film also features a supernatural subplot involving jinn – supernatural beings from Islamic myth – who, though remaining unseen, are marked by Carmine Di Florio’s shimmering score, reflecting and refracting light in Vincent’s direction, and perhaps influencing him as well. It’s not the most thoughtful story, but it works as an easy fix to shape Vincent’s slow maturation at the whims of the story, an inelegant journey that has its own fascinating outcomes.
Despite Vincent’s eventual pacifism, simply living in a world defined by war leaves him embittered in the long run, a transformation that the animators deftly depict through subtle details, like the worsening wrinkles under his eyes. The level of detail put into bringing the characters to life allows for a more reflective mourning of all that was lost in the war—from youthful innocence to opportunities for self-improvement (Vincent’s childhood bullying ends up playing a surprisingly useful role).
The Glassworker often takes its time, though in doing so, it builds toward tense and poignant moments, with its “heroes” and “villains” alike displaying unexpected complexity. While it doesn’t break new ground for animation in general (despite being a landmark in Pakistan), it is an effective tribute to the industry legend that really gets to the heart of what his films were about.