I had heard buzz on the web about this director/animator’s films, particularly Spirited Away. It was rare to read such unanimous praise for any studio’s work. I sort of chalked it up, though, as anime fanboys (and fangirls) in their own little world. Where a “10″ might be a “6″ to a non-anime fan.
Finally I caught a bit of Spirited Away that was showing one night on the IFC channel. It didn’t take very long before I realized I was watching a masterpiece, and a piece of animation (and writing) of an entirely different level than I expected.
I spent some time trying to convince a skeptical friend we should watch this together/ I happened on a DVD copy at my local public library so I figured that was a good way.
Before the DVD, a producer appears on the screen and basically describes the movie to follow as a masterpiece. Talk about raising expectations. But once the film ends, you realize that he was stating a simple fact. This film is truly stunning.
The level of detail, precision and beauty on a visual level is incomparable. There are a number of animated films that are a joy to watch. But what really moves the work into greatness is But added to that is a truly creative and engrossing script. This is why Finding Nemo is so (deservedly popular).
Since I’m probably the last person in the civilized world to see this, there’s little point in rehashing the synopsis. But there were a couple observations I made while seeing it.
In many movies, you can sort of figure out what’s going to happen next. There are certain cinematic tropes, cliches or shorthand where a character does a certain action which is going to lead to something you can expect. Sometimes it’s just a certain camera angle or a music cue that’s used to lead to the next scene. On your first viewing of Spirited Away, I can absolutely guarantee that you will not know what’s going to happen next, at any time in the movie. But what does happen always makes a specific kind of sense, if not logically, then emotionally.
A tenet in magical theory has long been that if you know a person’s name, you have a certain amount of control over their spirit. In some aboriginal cultures, infants were given a secret “real” name, and a name that was to be used in public. This is a large basis for the scenario in this film, where the antagonist “steals” the protagonist’s name.
The other thing you realize at the end is that the protagonist and some of the main characters have had their minds or souls “expanded” through their experiences and have grown. Not all characters, and in some cases it’s ambiguous, but basically there is a happy ending.
Finally, if you understand Japanese I personally would still recommend seeing the movie with the original Japanese soundtrack and subtitles. If you’re not very comfortable with subtitles, watch it once with the English dub (which incidentally, is probably the best dubbed foreign film I’ve ever seen) so you get a good grasp of the story.
So, after seeing the film, my friend said we should immediately get in the car and go to the local Barnes and Noble bookstore where she bought a brand new copy. This incidentally is a little lesson in piracy and illegal copying. Viewing a free copy (but legally acquired in this case) caused Disney Corp to rack up one more legal sale.
Page#4305 / last edited 20 Aug 2009
