Day 1: January 3rd, 2014: Spirited Away (2001) - Hayao Miyazaki

So I spent the past four months in the land of wine and cheese, Paris, and unfortunately I did not make the time I would have liked to to continue this blog. On January 2nd I got back, and after a long early-evening I succumbed to jet-lag by falling asleep at 8pm. Now that the effects have mostly worn off (I still wake up at 7am but whatever), I have come up with a fun proposal for how to spend my arctic-temperature-filled winter break. I have made up a list of 15 movies that I consider to be classics and necessary viewing for anyone interested in film. I am going to watch one film every day from January 3rd until January 17th, and I will give myself 24 hours to blog about it. Most of these films are films I’m slightly ashamed to admit I haven’t seen, so I’m not going to make excuses for myself. Now without further ado, let’s start with Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar winning 2001 film Spirited Away.

I basically had no idea what Spirited Away was about, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand why it’s nearly impossible to explain. It’s very unlike American animated cinema, with fantasy worlds being drawn out very clearly, with explanations as to why everything exists the way it does. Another film which came out in the same Oscar year, Disney’s 2002 film Treasure Planet, is Treasure Island but set in a galactic universe. There are humans and there are aliens, they live in an integrated society and for an American audience with a cultural history of Star Wars, that raises no questions. But Spirited Away draws on Asian culture that I haven’t been as exposed to (unless you count Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was done by animation companies in South Korea and draws on anime tropes). Spirits exist in this world but we don’t know what they do or what their purpose is, we just catch them at this snapshot in time. Lucky for us, Pixar’s John Lasseter is friends with Miyazaki, and Disney approached him to supervise the English language translation and distribution of Miyazaki’s films. That means that the main character Chihiro:

is Daveigh Chase, AKA Lilo:

and her work friend Lin:

is Hercules’ (and the stage version of Beauty and the Beasts’) Susan Egan:

and Chihiro’s friend Haku:

is Hairspray, 30 Rock, and X-Men’s James Marsden:

In the most basic terms, the story is about a young girl Chihiro who finds herself trapped in the spirit world after her father takes a wrong turn on their way to their new house. She meets a boy named Haku, who protects her and tells her that she must get a job at a spirit bathhouse to keep herself safe (since the spirits don’t like humans). The bathhouse is under the control of the witch Yubaba.

Definitely what makes the story most interesting is that no character is inherently good or evil, but each one has his or her own individual set of morals and values. Even though the spirits despise humans, they grow to like Chihiro as her work ethic solidifies her place in the bathhouse. And as they come to accept her, the audience sees Chihiro coming into her own as a young girl who could hardly let go of her mom’s hand in the beginning of the film.

Miyazaki wanted to tell a story about a 10 year old girl who would serve as a role model for other young girls, and Chihiro definitely grows to be both courageous and clever beyond her years. I spent my whole childhood thinking that Disney and Pixar owned the children’s animated film market because no other company put as much heart into their films as those two did, but now I know of another company whose films are basically this:

And I’ll try not to hold a grudge for the fact that Spirited Away beat my favorite animated film of all time, Lilo & Stitch, at the 2002 Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature.