Spirited Away   

Directed and Written by Hayao Miyazaki

English version translated by Cindy Davis and Donald H. Hewitt

Rated PG for some scary moments

125 minutes runtime

Do you remember the first time you saw Walt Disney’s “Fantasia?”  Or “Alice in Wonderland” or “Peter Pan?”  Do you remember how those movies swept you away with their combination of the weird and the wonderful; replacing the flat, dull and corporeal with living statements?  Walking light posts that showed you the way.  Cats that talked, brooms that walked, kids that flew and playing cards that marched like soldiers.  Welcome to the world of Chihiro and Haku and their world of witches and ghosts.  Fat radish spirits that don’t care how they look (or taste), witches with babies the size of box cars and little subway trains that whisk you away in the night with only a sigh from their motors and a quiet clickity-clack from their invisible wheels.

The birth of animation was a watershed event for America.  Animation was an art form wherein we made the world, throwing off the last of our mortal restrictions as we had thrown off the rules of our parent countries.  It gave life to things that we kids cared about, like frogs and mice, teapots and crack-pots--the creepy old man or woman who lived in the big old house down the street and the moon, stars, street lights and shadows that made up our nights.

“Spirited Away” does all this and more.  It is a very adult animated feature film with enough meaning to go around for the entire family.  The opening scene is a car ride with the film’s heroine, Chihiro, in (where else?) the back seat.  Her parents are telling her how great their new house, and her father’s new job, will be.  The parents are proud, successful products of the international suburbs.  Although this film is a thoroughly Japanese product, these first three characters don’t look Asian.  The family is driving an Audi, the father looks vaguely Slavic.  The mother looks like Mary Tyler Moore on the old Dick Van Dyke Show.  The artist’s brush has masked conventional ethnic characteristics.  The audience is given notice that nothing will be obvious in this film.  They are going to have to figure it out.

The parents are telling Chihiro how good she has it.  How her new life will be so great.  But Chihiro is upset.  Upset, suspicious and not buying any of it.  The family glimpses the new house in the distance but Dad decides to take a shortcut.  He has lost his way.  Sound familiar?  In ten seconds time he is on a dirt road driving like a maniac.  Now the audience and Chihiro all know something is wrong.  But what?  The car screeches to a halt in front of an abandoned entry gate.  Outside of the gate are toppled stones, reminiscent of gravestones.  Chihiro asks what they are, her mother replies that some people believe spirits live in the stones.  Her tone dismisses the superstition; the look on Chihiro’s face confirms it.

Inside the entry gate the father identifies an abandoned theme park.  “Many were built in the 70s and left deserted after they went bankrupt,” he says in his worldly way, reflecting his firm grasp of adult affairs: money, success and consumption.  As he swaggers confidently up the main street with Chihiro’s mother behind, a change is taking place in their relationship.  The little-girl Chihiro is growing more powerful and her parents are turning into helpless victims of their own physical desires.  Her vision sharpens, as that of her parents blurs.

The adults smell food, and find, oddly enough, an open shop with plenty of delicious food but no one in site.  They are suddenly very hungry; the petite mom takes a big plate and dad takes three, mounded to overflowing with rich and exotic meats and delicacies.  Chihiro turns away, suspicious, but her parents can’t take their eyes off the bounty before them: the richness of the world, there for the taking.  Walking to the main building, Chihiro sees, to her horror, that as the sun is setting the street is coming alive with shadowy spirits.  This place is far from deserted, and the darker it gets, the more active the shadows.  She runs back to her parents.  Obsessed with their feast, they turn to her, monsters now in flesh as well as spirit, under the spell of their own excesses.

As Chihiro flees in panic she is grabbed by, Haku, a boy of the same age and, in fact, virtually the same appearance.  Haku knows these strange streets and the people and spells in them.  He tells Chihiro that humans are hated in this spirit town, she must be careful, and starts her on a chain of meetings that bumps her first into Kamagi, the creaky old spider-man who fires the boilers and grinds sweet incense for the bathwaters.  His servants are an army of soot balls that carry the coal to stoke the furnace.  This is followed by her meeting with Yubaba, the witch in charge---the Leona Helmsly of the Hilton from Hell.

Through these meetings we learn that the entire village is actually a spa for spirits, run by changelings, witches, and humans who have lost their names and are trapped.  A place where the underworld comes to recharge their batteries.  Hence the most delectable food imaginable, literally the food of the Gods.  Just think, how fresh would vegetables have to be for the radish god?  She also learns that something is afoot, and Haku is in the middle of it.  Or is he victimized by it?  Is the witch Yubaba controlling him, or is something else controlling them all?

The film is a series of allegories enacted by Chihiro and the people, spirits and demons she meets.  Chihiro represents right, more frequently seen by the young than the old.  Insights that are God-given and uncorrupted by the physical world.  Through the series of events, Hayao Miyazaki creates one of the most beautiful and uplifting statements of the struggle between the spirit and the body yet to grace the silver screen.  It is a statement of the power of youth as strong as “Peter Pan” and a fantasy of the epic proportions of “Fantasia.”

The scenes in the movie are a combination of computer graphics and animation.  The computer work is restrained, there are no spectacular special effects a la “Star Wars” but the clever writer has taken a couple of George Lucas’ monsters and adapted them as slurping, craven beasts to challenge Chihiro.  The scenery and backgrounds are touching and understated; the water scenes cut right through the conscious mind and burrow deep into our dream centers.  The scenes of the distant lights across the expanse of water that has cut off Chihiro’s escape are the most simple, yet the most powerful, in the movie.  She can see the real world, but it may as well be another planet.  Arial shots look down on the little subway train--two cars moving in the darkness over the partially submerged railroad tracks on a route to nowhere.  The music score, like the nationalities of the characters, is hard to pin down.  It is luxurious with a hint of “lounge” influence, reminiscent of very mellow surf music with new age overtones.  The sound, composition and voices of the characters are flawless and powerful.  The movie moves slowly and gracefully, like a dream, to its conclusion.