Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Rated PG, 4/4
English dub: Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden, Susan Egans, David Ogden Stiers
Spirited Away is one of those few films - animated or otherwise - I would call breathtaking. It presents a vibrantly colourful world in which there is never a dull moment. The amazing part? It's completely hand drawn. Frame. By. Frame. Now it's not just eye candy, it's eye candy you can truly savour for all it's worth (yeah, okay, bad pun/metaphor/whatever you like).
Now, let me chastise anyone who is turned off from the movie because of the word 'anime'. Don't go into this movie thinking 'anime = Pokemon'. This is a far cry - in a good way - from the silly, spastic animes like Pokemon and Sailor Moon. Spirited Away is not sloppy, slapstick or cliched. It is mature, and, at points, suspenseful and dark. Everything in Chihiro's life at this point are at a great and actual risk. Just because it's animated does not mean it is a child's movie. Spirited Away is everyone's movie - even if you aren't a fan of the genre.
Spirited Away tells the story of 10-year-old Chihiro (Chase), who is en route to a new house with her parents when her father decides to stop and explore what appears to be an abandoned theme park. While her parents gorge themselves on food that just happens to be sitting there (not a very bright idea, right?) and literally turn into pigs, Chihiro wanders around and discovers that the 'theme park' is actually a town of and for the spirits, the hub of which is a bathhouse. The bathhouse is run by the evil witch Yubaba (Pleshette), who unwillingly gives Chihiro a job - though in exchange for Chihiro's identity. Chihiro is helped by the enigmatic Haku (Marsden), who may or may not be Yubaba's minion, the somewhat grumpy Lin (Egan), and the 8-legged boiler man Kamajii (Stiers), perhaps the most interesting character to watch.
Not only is Spirited Away beautifully animated (it doesn't need to be said again, but I will say it anyway), but it's story and characters are also interesting pieces of work...not the way I felt about Ponyo, one of Miyazaki's other works (he also did Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro, just to name a few). At first I couldn't really figure why I did not care so much for Ponyo (besides it's song); but after watching Spirited Away, it became clear to me: First, it is much easier to concentrate on a movie when not comparing it to another version of the same story; Spirited Away has similarities with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but Ponyo is based on Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid", so guess what other Disney movie I had in mind while viewing it? Second, Ponyo was all light; there was no real villain, no real threat, no real darkness. There was one storm and a little bit of darkness, but there was no darkness in any of the characters or any of the surroundings. Spirited Away had dark and light, good and bad, greed and love, risk and reward. It is more human than Ponyo, and is, in truth, much more human than many other movies - especially live action ones - today.
