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There are so many magical beings in Spirited Away, directed by Japanese animation master, Hayao Miyazaki, that sometimes, even the creatures seen in the story scare each other. Although, don't be misled: even if it's set in a fantasy world and have an infinity of fantastic characters, the film could hardly be considered a 'children's film'. For the contrary, filled with pauses in the action and contemplative silences, this production certainly will please much more adults than the youngest audience, that might even be scared at certain points.
Written by Miyazaki himself, Spirited Away is about a little girl, Chihiro, whose parents decide to move. During their trip to their new home, the girl's family gets lost, and they end up finding a tunnel in the middle of the woods. Courious, the two adults decide to find out what's in the other side of the tunnel for Chihiro's desperation, who can feel there's something wrong in the air. Convinced that they found the ruins (very well conserved) of an abandoned theme park, Chihiro's parents are quite surprised when they see a big table filled with food, which they must taste. Refusing to share the mysterious meal, the girl walks away and finds a boy, Haku, who warns her about the danger of remaining in that place after sunset. Unfortunately, the warn is a bit too late, and Chihiro finds out that her parents have been turned into pigs and the 'theme park' is actually, a bath house frequented by gods. Now, she must adapt to that scary world and try to find, with Haku's help, some way to bring her parents back to normal.
As it can be noticed, the plot of Spirited Away is a real nightmare for children, all alone in the world, without counting on her parents, the girl gets inside a strange place inhabited by ghosts. Determined to make her journey a real terror, Miyazaki creates huge and scary scenaries, such as the long wooden stairs, that has no handrails, is miles from the ground, which makes Chihiro go step by step sitting down. It was not by chance, that during the 125 minutes of film, the one word that came to my mind the most was 'scary'.
It's not that Spirited Away doesn't have their moments of humor, but, when the laughter come, they're caused, most of the time, by a sentiment of weirdness or by relief after a more tense moment. This tendency, by the way, is mirrored by the visual of the characters themselves, that, in the other hand of most animations, have no trace of 'cute' in them, except of course, the little mouse and the bird who follow Chihiro towards the end of the film. A good example of those weird characters, the scary (ther it its, 'scary' again) Yubaba: wrinkled, with a soar voice, giant head, who owns the bath house, enters the film in a very particular and remarkable way, smoking and blowing out a thick smoke through her huge nose. But, Miyazaki also teaches a great lesson about the mistake of judging people (or in the case of this film, creatures) by how they look like, by introducing Kamajii, a character whose several arms remind a spider, but in fact, has a great heart.
With a tone clearly episodic, the script has many different challenges for her hero, what, in certain moments, compromises a bit the focus of the story: one important character, Zeniba, for example, is just introduced in the story after half way through the film, which usually is a big narrative mistake. Besides, not all 'episodes' are equally interesting: although the sight of the muddy spirit of the river (another beautiful lesson from the director) is fascinating, the same can't be said by the incidents related to another character, the 'No-Face', whose motivations are never clearly revealed, in spite of the importance of the character in the plot. Why his mood changes depending on the place he's at? And what was his destiny anyway?
Chihiro is an amazing lead role. Initially, shown as a bored child, the girl gradually becomes more mature and braver, growing (emotionally) in front of our eyes. Besides, Miyazaki's carefully detailed animation adds even more details to the personality of the character, for example, the way the girl crosses her arms and squeeze them against her body in a moment of higher anxiety, or how she leaps of distress towards their parents' stubborness. And notice, also, the subtelty in which she puts on her shoes, kicking the floor, to adjust them on her feet. Particularities such as those make the director one of the most respected on the area of animation.
Though is one bit too long, Spirited Away is one of the most interesting animations in recent years, only compared to the Pixar productions.
*It's also curious to see that just like the Pixar productions themselves, this film was also distributed by Disney in the US, whose animation department, constantly disappoints us with their most recent works. It seems that Mickey's enterprise is following the old saying: if you can't beat them, join them.
10/10
