Reviewed 9/20/02SPIRITED AWAY (2001) ***1/2
Reviewed 9/20/02
Hayao Miyazaki is not only Japan’s greatest film animator, he may well be the greatest film animator ever. His reputation rests on a mere eight feature films, only one of which, PORCO ROSSO, is less than satisfying. His MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE are masterpieces of cinema whether in the form of animation or live-action. Miyazaki is equally adept at creating imaginative fantasy worlds and affecting characters, but the level of casually observed detail in both settings and characters is what makes his work unique. Miyazaki’s latest effort, SPIRITED AWAY, is not one of his best owing to an overemphasis on setting over character, but it is still an essential viewing experience.
Young Chihiro (Daveigh Chase, who also did superb work in LILO & STITCH) is upset that her family is moving to a new town. On the way there, her parents (Michael Chiklis and Lauren Holly) try to take a short cut and stop at what looks like an abandoned amusement park site. A strange boy named Haku (Jason Marsden) warns Chihiro to leave before the sun goes down, but Chihiro is too late and finds her parents have been transformed into swine. As night arrives, so does the populace, ghostly shadows and an odd assortment of colorful creatures, some of whom could have emerged from Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.” Chihiro finds she and her parents have inadvertently crossed into the threshold of the spirit world. Miyazaki’s inspiration stems from the Japanese-originated Shinto faith which believes divinities personify facets of the natural world. Among the most idiosyncratic in SPIRITED AWAY is the radish spirit who looks like a cross between an albino walrus and a sumo wrestler.
Chihiro finds her way to Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers), the eight-limbed man who runs a boiler room that heats the water for a bathhouse for the spirits. He in turn gets Chihiro an audience before witch Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), who lords over the bathhouse. (Given Yubaba’s name, she is probably inspired by the witch from Russian folklore, Baba Yaga.). Yubaba gives Chihiro a job under maid Lin (Susan Egan), while Chihiro tries to figure out a way to turn her parents back before they become bacon for the spirits.
SPIRITED AWAY is aptly compared to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” what with its array of surreal characters – a talking frog, a trio of disembodied heads, a giant baby (who gets turned into a mouse at one point), a hopping lantern, and soot balls (cousins to the dust bunnies from Miyazaki’s TOTORO). What makes the film uniquely Miyazaki though is the attention to detail in the animation. Anime (Japanese animation) is usually marked by more realistic human movement, which is not so elastic and exaggerated as in a lot of animation in the U.S. No one does this realism as well as Miyazaki, who gives Chihiro the recognizable body language of a child. She has to walk faster to keep up with the larger strides of adults, and her body vibrates with a youthful nervous energy.
Disney’s Buena Vista is acting as distributor, and they have done a fine job in dubbing the film into English. Daveigh Chase and Susan Egan’s expressive voice work are especially notable in bringing their characters to life. Still, Miyazaki spends too much time and energy on the fantastic setting and not enough on the characters, many of whom do not exist except as a function of enhancing the environment. What an environment it is though, populated by majestic imagery like walls of flowers or train tracks beneath translucent water. If the movie were simply a travelogue through this world, it would still be a wonder to behold.