Review: ‘Spirited Away’ a touching, surreal adventure
With mysterious spirits, pigs, a dragon, impossibly cute soot sprites, one plucky 10-year-old girl and so much more, it’s easy to see why “Spirited Away” is ranked among the top Hayao Miyazaki films of all time.
“Spirited Away,” which played twice this past week on the big screen again at our local Cinemark movie theater for special 15th anniversary showings through Fathom Events, is considered by many to be among the very best of animated movies, too.
The Miyazaki-directed film combines coming-of-age themes with spectacular animation and a touching, swiftly moving story of adventure, family and newfound friendship to create something truly magical from start to finish. It’s an odd and surreal world you enter in “Spirited Away,” but the trip is rewarding.
When young Chihiro and her parents travel to a new home in the country, they happen upon a strange tunnel that leads to a magical world of spirits. At first, this world appears to be an abandoned, run-down theme park, but soon the parents are transformed into pigs after they start eating an array of delicious food at an empty restaurant counter.
While they eat, eat, eat, Chihiro wanders away and then finds herself trapped in a world where she must rescue her parents from this ignominious state while she works at a strange bathhouse, attending to guests’ needs. There, the cast of characters includes the boiler man and a proprietress witch named Yubaba who bosses Chihiro around.
Along the way, Chihiro, named
Sen in this new world, forges a friendship with a young boy named Haku, who advises her that she must both remember her own real name and also work, work, work to get herself and her parents freed from this spirit world.
Gorgeous animation, largely hand-drawn and the trademark of Studio Ghibli, captures both the natural world and a strangely beguiling, if frightening at times, human community full of whimsical weirdness, also a studio trademark.
The animation’s attention to detail and genuine beauty support the emotional impact of the narrative, which sees Chihiro employ her wits, creativity and intuition to meet the challenges she faces. Love, friendship and growth are explored with a minimal sense of sentimentality, although the movie should elicit a tear or two from moviegoers.
And as far as Chihiro goes, she’s a genuinely likeable heroine, someone accessible and real for children to admire as they themselves meet life’s changes and transformations.
Whether for the storytelling itself or the underlying message it conveys, “Spirited Away” becomes utterly enchanting and a million percent magical. For such a purely fun movie, it’s also pretty deep.
“Spirited Away” won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. If you can see it on the big screen, do so, but even on DVD and Bluray it’s surely a treasure not to be missed. Although thematically it may win over adults more readily, its charms should please children, too.
Look for Fathom Events to present showings of another Miyazaki film, “Princess Mononoke,” in early January.
(On the Net: SpiritedAway15. com and movies.disney.com/ spirited-away.)