...another stroke of genius in a string of achievements from master animator Hayao Miyazaki.
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How do we love thee? Let us count the ways: Best Picture, Berlin Film Festival. Best Animated Feature, Online Film Critics Society. Best Animated Film, New York Film Critics Circle. Best Animated Feature, Los Angeles Film Critics Awards. Best Animated Feature, National Board of Review. Best Film, Japanese Academy Awards. And Best Animated Picture of 2002, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
"Spirited Away" has also the distinction of being the most popular movie in the history of Japanese cinema. Not bad for a film that almost didn't get made, its creator thinking of retirement. Animator Hayao Mikazaki was about to give it up after producing such brilliant anime as "The Castle of Cagliostro" (1979), "Castle in the Sky" (1986), "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989), and "Princess Mononoke" (1997). Let's hope there's always just one more like "Spirited Away" left in him.
The story is about a ten-year-old girl, Chihiro (voiced in Japanese by Runi Hiiragi and in English by Daveigh Chase of "Lilo and Stitch" fame), and her spiritual growth through a magical journey. When we first meet Chihiro she is bored and unhappy at the prospect of having to relocate to a new city, move into a new house, and go to a new school. As she and her parents (Takashi Naito and Michael Chicklis as the father, Yasuko Sawaguchi and Lauren Holly as the mother) approach the new town, her father remarks it's "in the middle of nowhere." Indeed. He takes a shortcut through an enchanted forest inhabited by spirits, and the story is off and running.
The family shortly find themselves in what the thickheaded father believes is an abandoned theme park, and while the mom and dad start to glut out in a deserted restaurant, Chihiro finds and begins to explore a huge and ornate bathhouse. Turns out, it's a bathhouse for the gods, a place the gods come to relax while off duty; and there a young boy, Master Haku (Miyu Irino and Jason Marsden), tells her to get away before it turns dark. Too late. The sun sets, demons are abroad, and the parents are turned into pigs!
Chihiro must overcome tough odds to rescue her parents and return them all to their own human world. The movie is a fusion of "The Wizard of Oz," "Alice in Wonderland," and "Yellow Submarine," with the same kind of surrealistic landscapes, marvelous characters, and fabulous events at every bend in the story line. The bathhouse setting may appear rather restricted for the scope of the narrative, but Miyazaki invests the place with enough wondrous invention to keep a person's attention, something along the line of Hogwarts in the Potter films.
In this new world Chihiro encounters Yubaba (Mari Natsuki/Suzanne Pleshette), the witch who rules the bathhouse. Yubaba's penthouse suite is extravagantly well detailed by the artists, luxuriously colored and embellished. The witch herself is an elegant hag who's taken an oath to grant a job to anyone who asks, but then she controls those around her by stealing their names. Next, there's Kumagi (Bunta Sugawara/David Ogden Stiers), the six-armed boiler keeper; Aogaeru (Tatsuya Gashuin/John Ratzenberger), the assistant manager; Lin (Yumi Tamai/Susan Egan), Chihiro's new roommate in a dormitory of servant girls; and an assortment of other astonishing creatures, like the monster called "No Face," to contend with.
Naturally, the power of love eventually conquers all, with an ending that will make you smile, the whole thing concluding with a winsome fairy-tale song, "Itsumo Nando-Demo" ("Always With Me"), lyrics by Wakako Kaku, music and vocal by Youmi Kimura. The movie's plot takes maybe a few too many twists and turns to be wholly coherent, and at over two hours it's a little long as well, but the story is extraordinarily resilient and keeps one going back for more.
The finely hand-drawn characters are set against a rich tapestry of vividly painted backgrounds, mostly done up in light pastel shades. It's all quite spectacular to see, the images fanciful and entertaining. Nor is humor entirely overlooked, with some of Yubaba's scenes charmingly whimsical and the Stink Spirit especially amusing.
Miyazaki says that the inspiration for the film came after he met the bored young daughter of a friend and decided to make a film about such a person. He says in the DVD set's accompanying booklet that he "tried as much as possible to make the main character an everyday person. So her face is not particularly beautiful. She was not cute or appealing, and I was wondering what to do with her. But by the end of the film, I wasn't worried about her at all, and felt quite sure that she would become an attractive person." Miyazaki also reflects on the bathhouse setting, saying, "I have some strange impressions of Japanese bathhouses dating from my youth. I always wanted to stage a film in a strange place, and I thought a bathhouse for gods would be even more fun.... In my grandparents' time, it was believed that gods and spirits existed everywhere--in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe in this, but I like the idea that we should treasure everything because...there is a kind of life to everything." He concludes, "Our story is one in which the natural strengths of the character are revealed by the situations she encounters. I wanted to show that people actually have these things in them that can be called on when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. This is how I wish my young friends to be, and I think that this is how they, themselves, hope to be."
Now for the part of the review that every "Spirited Away" fan is going to abhor, the negatives. I mean, how is it that the movie made over $200,000,000 in Japan before it ever arrived in America and then couldn't make a twentieth of that amount over here? I would suggest several reasons. First, the movie stars a female protagonist, a commendable feature considering the dearth of feminine leads in any sort of movie but something that may turn off adolescent boys. Second, not all Americans appreciate the Japanese anime style of moviemaking, especially now that Hollywood is turning out zingier computer-generated products. Third, American audiences may be getting more attuned lately to the hip, fast-paced, gag-laden tone of things like "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." Finally, and most important, filmgoers may simply find "Spirited Away" too slow, too careful, too deliberate for their taste.
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[release]10803[/release]