SPIRITED AWAY
For a Film full of stink spirits, faceless ghosts, dragon boys and kimono-wearing frogs, Spirited Away seems oddly real. Sure, Hayao miyazaki’s 2001 Studio Ghibli animation is set in a magical dreamland accessed through an abandoned amusement park, one where parents are turned into pigs and sentient balls of soot scurry around characters’ feet. But to anyone able to recall the emotions of growing up, Spirited Away felt familiar: a fantasy rooted in the reality of being a kid, in an oversized world that at once enchants and terrifies.
The film follows Chihiro, a cherub-cheeked ten-year-old forced to leave her friends and move to a new town. En route, her family happens upon a strange woodland and set out to explore. Soon, Chihiro finds herself lost in a supernatural realm decorated with exquisite bathhouses and bizarre creatures, some of whom mean her harm.
So far, so Alice In Wonderland. But Spirited Away’s combination of jaw-dropping visuals, bittersweet music and deliciously dreamy storytelling (miyazaki famously never wrote scripts, preferring to storyboard from his imagination instead) set it apart. The film struck a uniquely floaty tone that enraptured audiences, becoming a hit at home and abroad. Four years earlier, miyazaki had entertained Japanese audiences with Princess Mononoke, an epic fable about warring forest tribes. This follow-up was even bigger, blasting its way to the all-time Japanese box-office record and becoming a cult smash with Western audiences too.
John lasseter was in part to thank for this: it was the Pixar head honcho who persuaded Disney to buy the distribution rights and put a dubbed version of the film in Western cinemas in 2003. awards glory followed: to this day, it’s the only hand-drawn and non-english-language animation to have won Best animated Feature at the oscars. more important than its awards haul, however, is its legacy. in 2019, it’s regularly referenced as one of the most charming and bewitching films ever. a recent run in Chinese theatres saw it hold off Toy Story 4 at the top of the box office. With Studio Ghibli’s future unclear and the director’s days as a filmmaker presumed over, it’s viewed today as the definitive miyazaki fairy tale: a whimsical feast for the senses that whisks you off to another place, just as its title promised.
like Mononoke, it packed an environmentally conscious message about the fragile beauty of our natural surroundings, and man’s knack for stomping all over that beauty. Humans are reduced to slobbering animals in Spirited Away, which also features a river-monster made of pollution and calming beats where characters are allowed to gaze admiringly at the streams, sunsets and plant life in front of them. miyazaki described these moments as ‘ma’ — pockets of purposeful emptiness, that give the movie room to breathe.
miyazaki is rumoured to have recently stepped out of retirement to work on one last film: How Do You Live?, his swansong, supposedly due in 2020. Whether it can reach the heights of Spirited Away, a film that still soars like Haku’s dragon, is unknown. Whatever happens, at least we’ll always have this, a coming-of-age cartoon reverie that perfectly captures the terror and wonder of being a kid.