What do you get when you cross an anime master, a little girl, and hundreds of strange, unearthly creatures with magical powers? Don’t worry—it isn’t Pokemon. Spirited Away, the newest animated film from renowned Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Monoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service) is not only the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, but has also, since its English release, quickly become a favourite of both critics and fans at film festivals across North America.
The plot takes viewers out of the realm of reality and into a bizarre world that moves beyond traditional fairy-tale boundaries and towards the surreal.
Chihiro, the film’s feisty heroine (voiced by Lilo and Stitch’s Daveigh Chase), finds herself trapped in a bathhouse inhabited by spirits who have turned her parents into pigs as punishment for greedily gobbling a banquet left for bathhouse guests. With the help of Haku (Jason Marsden), a boy held prisoner by the bathhouse owner, Chihiro must navigate her way through the mystical and magical new world, and find a way to set her parents free.
Visually, Spirited Away is stunning. Miyazaki’s imagination is allowed to soar and the result is a weird, wonderful world full of colour, detail, and breathtaking creativity.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the hundreds of creatures that inhabit the bathhouse—the film is a continuous stream of other-worldly characters appearing and disappearing, with barely enough time to marvel at one before another appears. Nature, always a central theme in Miyazaki’s work, is again front and centre, making the movie’s lush watercolour backgrounds and forest scenes a joy to behold.
With a gentle sense of humour accessible to both adults and children alike, Spirited Away is one of the best animated films in years. Miyazaki announced his retirement shortly after the film’s release in Japan, but thankfully he hasn’t stuck to it. He’s currently working on an unnamed project slated for release in 2004. If Spirited Away is any indication, he has enough imagination in store for hundreds more films, and many are waiting eagerly to see what he comes up with next.
