Spirited "Away" by Homer Yen (c) 2002
While "Spirited Away" may go largely unnoticed in the USA, this visually remarkable Japanese animated offering has caught the attention of the international filmgoing community. It was bestowed Best Picture honors at the 2002 Japanese Academy Awards and the 2002 Berlin Film Festival. And writer/director Hayao Miyazaki has received unanimous praise for his story and illustrations about a sullen 10-year old girl who finds herself trying to cope within a Wonderland of bizarre monsters and illogical rules.
Why will it go unnoticed? Adults have an aversion to seeing animated films, and will usually embrace them only when Disney creates them and when it's something to take their kids to see. There are countless examples of adult-oriented animated films that have been released but have flopped miserably, causing American animation studios to pack up and call it quits. The Japanese are vanguard producers of such art, and you will quickly notice the level of detail, the exquisite textures, and the vivid colors that put Japanese animation beyond the grasp of anything that American's can do.
You'll be impressed by it's beauty. The story, however, is a bit tougher to embrace. "Spirited Away" tells the story of Chihiro (voiced by Daveigh Chase) who, with her family, is on their way to a new home in the suburbs when they take a wrong turn and wind up at an abandoned theme park. One of the food stands is operational. The parents find it odd, but dismiss it in favor of their need for dinner.
Chihiro wanders off to look around and makes a chilling discovery as night falls. Faceless spirits wander around, the parents have undergone a startling transformation, and she is being hunted by the mysterious entities that populate the park. Only advice from a strange boy named Haku (voiced by Jason Marsden) may help her make sense of her situation and free her from her nightmarish world.
Once the Wonderland aspect begins to take shape, the film becomes an artistic feast. The look of the film has classical Far Eastern influences, and everything looks like it was drawn by hand and not computer generated. Impressive elements include the many landscape shots that resemble watercolor pieces, a boiler room that is occupied by a spider-like being and enchanted balls of soot, and the multitude of wild creatures that exist in this world.
Sometimes, cartoons have trouble evoking the human struggle. But, the animation ably brings about the sense of urgency, fear, loneliness that our young heroine faces.
While Chihiro struggles with her situation, movie watchers will struggle in the following areas. First, the film seems to subtly introduce themes and mythologies that will be hopelessly foreign to Westerners. I even felt at a loss how to describe certain ideas, especially the character "No-Face" whose inclusion was enigmatic to me. The most salient theme, however, was the issue of gluttony (the doorway to imprisonment) as well as the issue of love (the key to freedom). Secondly, we've grown used to the 30-minute Cartoon Network programs, and that kind of conditioning will not bode well for a film of this length (it clocks in at 124 minutes). But, if you're on the lookout for something wholly unique, you'd be doing yourself a great disservice by not giving yourself a chance to be "Spirited Away" by this film.
Grade: B+ S: 0 out of 3 L: 0 out of 3 V: 1 out of 3
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