Spirited Away (2002, U.S. release)

Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
Distributed by Walt Disney.
124 minutes.

LVJeff's Rating: 10/10

Japanese Wonderland

I have to admit it. This was my first Hayao Miyazaki film.

I had heard about the praise that was lavished upon his previous works. Not too long ago, Princess Mononoke became the anime to talk about -- it broke box office records and won numerous awards. Earlier works included Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro, a film that quickly earned a spot in Roger Ebert's steadily growing list of "Greatest Movies."

All I knew about these works was that they were very highly regarded. That was enough for me to decide that I would watch them one day, but, as is my habit, I try not to learn anything more about them. And so the only parts I've seen of them came from snippets in trailers and television commercials. From what I could tell, they looked whimsical and featured child protagonists. I had also heard that these were magical stories for children, but were so fantastic that they could be enjoyed by anyone.

This can all apply to Miyazaki's latest movie, Spirited Away. Part of it gave me what I expected -- the heroine is a little girl who has adventures in a magical land. The animation and color are bright and full of life, skillfully rendered and beautifully detailed. Much cutesiness could be found in a number of creatures who largely communicated only through their relatively big, soulful eyes.

I felt sad that I hadn't gotten around to seeing the previous Miyazaki-directed films before finally sitting down to view Spirited Away, but perhaps this gave me my own unique experience with the movie. Certainly the impact of the things I didn't expect turned out to be greater than normal in this scenario. But then, I'm not sure anything could have prepared me for the absolute bizarreness of this movie. Watching Spirited Away is like watching an Eastern imagination explode. The landscapes and architecture are of the quaint, old-fashioned Japanese variety. Paper flies and white dragons have a part to play in the story. Three disembodied heads provide comic relief. Perils include helplessly watching your parents turn into pigs, having your body threaten to fade away, losing and forgetting your name, and being bullied by a giant talking baby.

The main character, Chihiro, participates in a journey not unlike those experienced by Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy in Oz. Both those classic heroines encountered creatures of pure imagination, and Chihiro fares no differently. On one hand, this creates my only real gripe with the movie -- that Chihiro's emotional path had already been trod upon by Dorothy -- but on the other hand, what is wondrous about Spirited Away is that we are allowed to see the kind of creativity required for such tales come from a unique Japanese perspective, one which can stand alongside those that created Wonderland and Oz.

For only a Japanese Lewis Carroll could have come up with a sorceress whose head is just as tall and five times as wide as a 10-year-old's body. Only a Japanese L. Frank Baum could have given a girl a traveling companion troupe in the form of a mutant fly, a chubby mouse, and a lonely monster who wears an expressionless mask. Only from this mind could a scary and vast fantasy world contain a bath-house attended to by frogs, patronized by spirits in the form of walking sea creatures, fat ducks, and "stink gods," and kept afloat by a boiler room run by a kind, giant spider-creature who has living "soot" working for him.

I was so overwhelmed by this craziness that I barely stopped to think about any social commentary that may have been lurking in the frames. I know I got some message about river pollution. And something about how money can't buy you love. And if there was more, I didn't really care. I already know I plan to watch this a second time -- maybe I'll catch the lessons then.

For the time being, I'll enjoy the memories of the spectacle I witnessed. I can tell Miyazaki is creating a world just cohesive enough to hold a story, but open-ended enough to present multiple instances of wonderment. And there was still enough room to layer character development and emotional maturation over the proceedings. All this, and it had none of the things that usually bug me about anime -- characters with interchangeable faces, apocalyptic plots, objectified women.

If this is just an example of what Miyazaki has to offer, I can't wait to get to the rest.

©Jeffrey Chen, Sep. 18, 2002

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