SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
With hordes of colourful spirits, enthralling magical setting and a story rich with themes and spirituality, Spirited Away ranks up there as one of Ghibli’s finest films, and as one of the finest animated movies ever produced.
Much like the waters in its famous bathhouse, creativity and spirituality flow in unending abundance in Spirited Away. As the only hand-drawn, non-English film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Miyazaki’s wonderfully drawn fairy tale is often the first film mentioned when people chat about Studio Ghibli, and perhaps rightfully so. Unlike its fellows from Disney, which largely subsist on sentimentality, well-worn paths and even more well-worn messages, this is a powerful rebuttal of any notion that animated films have to be insipid and repetitive. I’ve seen this film four times now, and it stands out to me as one of the few films I know will always be a great experience, but also somehow get even better every time I watch them. While it may not necessarily be the best of the studio’s films, it’s most definitely one of the best regardless.
While moving with her parents to a new neighbourhood, the ten-year-old Chihiro finds herself journeying into the realm of the kami, the spirits of Japanese folklore. With her parents transformed into pigs by Yubaba, the sorceress who rules this realm, Chihiro finds herself trapped and to protect herself, takes on a job at Yubaba’s bathhouse, which caters to millions of visitors from across the world of the spirits, while trying to find a way to free herself and her parents, and return to the human world. It’s a fairy tale that the likes of Lewis Carroll and his Alice in Wonderland would be proud of: unapologetically surreal and bursting at the seams with visual and narrative magic.
Normally, I’d like to write about the intelligent, theme-rich storytelling that’s one of the many aspects of this movie that elevates it above its peers, but to do so would turn this review a two-thousand-word essay, something which I’d like to avoid in order to actually keep people reading. There’s more than a few allusions to the frankly thoughtless way many of us treat the environment, but that’s not an uncommon theme for Ghibli movies. Its story is most compelling I think because of the way it reflects on human nature and the clash between old and new. First and foremost, it’s a coming-of-age journey for Chihiro, who has to adapt to her new surroundings by growing up and taking on a new identity while still trying to hold onto what defined her past self; a metamorphosis reflected by her greedy parents’ transformation into pigs destined for the slaughter. At first we’re not fond of her; she’s sullen and uncooperative, but she grows until we learn to appreciate her for her plucky attitude and her courage.
Unlike many of its fellows, it works on more than one level at once. It’s a critique of modern secular capitalism and its ignorance if not outright disrespect for tradition and spirituality, a metaphor for a changing society, and as a proof of the corrupting influence of human greed on everything it touches. Miraculously, it’s not as crammed and messy as it sounds. Miyazaki’s narrative unifies all these themes into a coherent and complex story, with no small number of richly drawn and highly memorable characters, both human and spirit.
You wouldn’t in fact be blamed for not taking those themes in. Spirited Away is a work of art even without that; populated with a veritable menagerie of spirits and beasts, it’s eye candy in its purest, most chaotic form. Its more well-known characters like the ghostly apparition of No-Face and the tiny soot sprites that inhabit the boiler rooms of the bathhouse alongside the many-armed Kamaji who keeps the hot water flowing, have become iconic and instantly recognisable figures in animation. Every scene and every shot is a visual marvel, from the steam-clouded tubs of the bathhouse as its patrons are scrubbed and doted on by hard-working attendants in uniform, to the shots of Chihiro running through the streets in a panicked search for an escape as the world of the spirits comes to life all around her, as spirits manifest underneath the neon signs of restaurants just opening for the night. There’s a scene in which Chihiro summons a herbal soak from the depths of the bathhouse to wash the gunk off a “stink spirit”, and she and everyone around her are swallowed by an unending torrent of sweet-scented hot water. Watching Spirited Away is much like that. It’s almost ridiculously lush and detailed, and never ever lets up. There are quite literally too many characters to be named; put simply, it has to be seen to be believed. Even the fourth time I watched it, I was still just as enchanted by the sheer volume of visual and aural magic on display. Forget simplicity. This is an unabashedly rich audiovisual experience and the genuine passion and love behind it effortlessly bridges all barriers of language and culture.
That in essence is why it’s one of Ghibli’s most well-known films: it’s brilliant and a clear counterpoint to the hectic and comparatively simplistic works of much of Western animation. It’s funny and strange, magical and otherworldly, and best of all, newcomers don’t need to have their hands held through it. It speaks for itself and then some, as a phenomenal work of art where imagination, creativity and heart flow unlimited and unending.
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