Spirited Away

What Sarah said:

I really like the beautiful animation and brilliant storytelling. It is very much the style of Hayao Miyazaki. This was one of the first of his films that I watched and was taken in by the imaginative and fantastical story of Chihiro, a girl who wanders into a world of gods, witches and spirits.

Mike’s verdict:

I was very confused during the first part of this film. Japanese animation is not something I regularly watch and I purposely avoid learning anything ahead of time about movies I plan to review. This, combined with the generically animated faces and the fact that I was watching the version with English voice actors, made the beginning of the narrative very misleading.

What I thought I was seeing, was a comically cliché American family, with a (possibly adopted?) daughter, as they were moving to a new town. I don’t know anything about what families are actually like in Japan, but the over-grown and over-bearing father, submissive mother and bratty child came across so much as the standard caricature of the American family that I was initially annoyed by the lack of exposition. Why is this American businessman moving his family to middle-of-no-where Japan? Why does their daughter have a Japanese name? Am I going to be forced to endure these annoying characters for the whole film? Everything about the characters seemed American – their interactions with each other, the way the father was driving, the lack of concern the parents had for their daughter, and especially the way the parents reacted to finding free food. None of the family interactions in this film conform to the image that I have come to expect of Japanese families. Like I said, I don’t know anything about what it’s like to be in a Japanese family, but this is definitely not how they are normally portrayed in films.

Of course, eventually I realized none of that mattered – the entire beginning of the film is just setting up a way for Chihiro to find herself in a fantastical land. The setup is flimsy and confusing, but it’s also mostly irrelevant.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is very hard for me to review. Fantasy is always hard to judge, and animated fantasy is even more so. Is the animation good? I suppose so? It’s not a style that I find compelling – I very much prefer more detail and dimension. But that’s doesn’t mean it’s bad. Is the plot interesting? Maybe? It’s like a child’s dream, rambling along without any real direction. But that’s often how fantasy works when the only constraint is what can be drawn and the storyteller wants to put in as many strange elements as possible. Is there an over-all message conveyed? Not really. I could probably stretch to suggest that a spoiled child learned the value of labour, but I don’t think Miyazaki actually intended that.

I can’t say that I found this film particularly interesting – it doesn’t speak to me. But of course it doesn’t. This is a story for the 10 year old girl who is unhappy with some aspect of her ten year old life. It’s for the girl that needs an escape from the unreasonable adults controlling her existence; an imaginary place she can get lost in – one that isn’t perfect, but is somewhere she can be in control as the hero.

6/10