September
27, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Japanese
Enchantment
A review of
Spirited Away.
By Thomas Hibbs
pirited
Away, the new film from Hayao Miyazaki, is an unusual film in many
ways. An animated film, from the director of the critically acclaimed
Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away has received a best-picture
award (Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival) and become the highest-grossing
Japanese film of all time. It appeals equally to kids and adults. What
most distinguishes the film is its lush and mesmerizing visual style.
The standard Hollywood computer generated animation seems flat and lifeless
by comparison to the crisp shapes and stunning colors of Miyazaki's images.
Miyazaki spares no effort in constructing scenes; seemingly minute and
unimportant details, such as the petals on flowers, repeatedly catch the
eye. More than computer wizardry, the artistry here resembles the careful
touch of the painter. This could have been distracting, arresting the
attention of the viewer and diverting it from the story, were not the
pacing so perfect and the presentation of a series of bizarre characters
so entrancing.
The film begins in
modern-day Japan with a family en route to its new home. On the way, the
parents try to assure their despondent ten-year-old daughter, Chihiro,
that the move will be an adventure. Then, they make a wrong turn and reach
a dead-end at a tunnel at the entrance to which a statue of an ancient
spirit stands guard. They pass through the tunnel and into what the parents
suppose to be an abandoned theme park. They have unwittingly stumbled
into another dimension and are now treading on the grounds of a bath-house
resort for spirits. When her parents find no one about (it's still daylight
and the spirits emerge only after dark), they satisfy their hunger on
some delicious food with a snorting gusto that repels their daughter.
As she urges them to leave, she discovers that they have been turned into
pigs.
The remainder of
the film involves the girl's attempts to find and release her parents
from bondage. Along the way she encounters a host of bizarre characters,
including Kamajii, whose multiple limbs make him a most productive worker,
a Stink Spirit who moves like animated sludge, Haku, her confidante who
transforms himself from human to serpentine shapes, an oversized baby,
and the Queen Yubaba (voiced by Suzanne Pleshette), who nearly enslaves
Chihiro, gives her a new name, and does her best to break the girl's spirit
and will.
This is not to say
that the logic of plot is all that lucid. The viewer might feel as if
he's entered a kiddy version of the worlds of David Lynch (in the dream
logic) or South Park (in the genial and pointless absurdity of
some of the minor characters). But Spirited Away has a natural,
not a contrived feel (contra Lynch) and is never cynical (contra South
Park). Spirited Away is a film targeted directly at kids but
one which parents will, if they can dispense with a demand for linear
logic in the plot, find thoroughly captivating. By contrast, Miyazaki's
most recent previous release, Princess Mononke, had more of an
epic feel to it, but it also had a strain of violence unsuitable for younger
children and a rather heavy-handed and tiresome ecological message.
The central lesson
of Spirited Away, a lesson that surfaces only rarely in American
movies aimed at children, is that endurance and hard work, courtesy and
kindness toward others, can win out in the face of unfairness, cruelty,
and arbitrary obstacles — things all kids confront on their way to
adulthood. The film establishes a nice balance between deference to others
and retaining a sense of oneself, highlighted in Haku's insistence that
Chihiro not forget her true name. The shape shifting of the spirit world
seems also to reflect the way children play with causality, their whimsical
sense that the world might be a series of comical non sequiturs.
The shape shifting also allows for those characters who appear malevolent
to reappear under different guises and ultimately to be transformed for
the better.
One final word. There
are two versions of Spirited Away in circulation in American theaters,
one an original language version with subtitles and the other dubbed in
English. For kids, the latter is clearly preferable and, I am happy to
report, the pejorative term "dubbed" hardly does justice to
a process, undertaken by Disney, that involved recreating new voices for
each of the characters. The dubbing, which is woven seamlessly into the
original film, is at the opposite pole from the dubbing of Japanese speakers
in old war films (which, admittedly, provided its own unintentionally
humorous form of entertainment).
pirited
Away, the new film from Hayao Miyazaki, is an unusual film in many
ways. An animated film, from the director of the critically acclaimed
Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away has received a best-picture
award (Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival) and become the highest-grossing
Japanese film of all time. It appeals equally to kids and adults. What
most distinguishes the film is its lush and mesmerizing visual style.
The standard Hollywood computer generated animation seems flat and lifeless
by comparison to the crisp shapes and stunning colors of Miyazaki's images.
Miyazaki spares no effort in constructing scenes; seemingly minute and
unimportant details, such as the petals on flowers, repeatedly catch the
eye. More than computer wizardry, the artistry here resembles the careful
touch of the painter. This could have been distracting, arresting the
attention of the viewer and diverting it from the story, were not the
pacing so perfect and the presentation of a series of bizarre characters
so entrancing. 
