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. 

Carrie (1976) - Brian De Palma

You can’t deny that you know exactly what movie this is from. You even know the story. Carrie is the girl everyone picks on in school, the outcast that gets elected prom queen as a joke. Unfortunately for her high school peers, this loner has recently come into some psychic powers, and when a prank goes too far, she maniacally and painfully takes her revenge on everyone involved. 

The greatest and most surprising part about this film? You sort of root for her.

Carrie was Stephen King’s first published novel, and his first to be adapted into a feature film. It stars Sissy Spacek (who a friend pointed out is Mae Tuck from Tuck Everlasting, and who is also the forgetful mother that gets sent to a senior citizens’ home in The Help), as Carrie White, the girl too weird for words. 

No. I’m not talking Lilo crazy. Carrie is shy, awkward, and very introverted. But early on, we realize that her weirdness is not at all her fault. In the first scene, Carrie is teased because she freaks out when she gets her period during an after-gym-class shower. The other girls throw tampons and towels at her, laughing while Carrie huddles in the corner of the shower and cries. Soon, we find out that Carrie’s mother is a twisted religion-obsessed crazy person. She punishes Carrie for getting her period, saying that she is a sinner and the blood is a sign of her sins. She then locks her daughter in a closet with a deformed Jesus relic and forces her to pray for hours.

The film is iconically slow in its buildup. The director has stated that he drew a lot from Hitchcock, most notably that the high school is named Bates High School after Norman Bates in Psycho, and that the film uses shrieking violins every time Carrie uses her psychic powers.

Right, so Carrie discovers she has psychic powers. First it’s breaking a light bulb with her mind, then it’s a cigarette plate, and then later a mirror. All of this happens in the same day, and Carrie immediately begins researching to figure out what’s going on, and she realizes that when she concentrates hard enough (usually when she’s very angry), she can move things with her mind.

So the girls who bullied Carrie are punished with a super intense detention by the gym teacher, the one teacher that actually pays attention to Carrie. She’s amazing. Here she is slapping the main bully for defying her.

The gym teacher eventually decides this girl is banned from prom, which inspires the whole “let’s make Carrie for prom queen and pour pigs blood on her when she is on stage” idea comes from. Surprisingly, there is one “popular” girl, Sue, who reaches out to Carrie and tells her boyfriend to ask Carrie to prom, and Sue and her boyfriend are therefore left out of the plan to prank Carrie.

The whole scene is spectacularly done in my opinion. Everything from Carrie hearing she has won, all the way until the bucket of pig’s blood falls on her, is in slow motion. Carrie is the happiest she will ever be, and the film makes sure to relish those moments. Everyone is applauding her, and when it finally falls, they all begin to laugh, just as Carrie’s mother told her they would. This causes Carrie to snap, and she shuts all of the doors with her mind and burns down the whole school, escaping and walking home drenched in blood. The most terrifying part I found in this scene is that Carrie never blinks once, as if she is so in shock by what just happened. The film did so well to make us pity Carrie, that we don’t care that she is killing all of the people that bullied her. Unfortunately the gym teacher dies in Carrie’s rage (unlike in the book), which I took as a sign that she didn’t do enough to help her. 

When Carrie arrives home, her mother is waiting for her to kill her, and that whole seen is perfect too. At first she conforts her, and then she pulls out a kitchen knife and stabs her, causing her to fall down the stairs. But Carrie’s powers are too great for her mother, and she is crucified up against the wall by the rest of the kitchen knives. The image is important because it reflects the contorted views of her mother, just as the Jesus in the closet had arrows through his stomach and his head turned to the right, the mother dies with knives in her stomach and her head turned to the right. It’s almost as haunting as watching her mother chase her through the house with the knife.

The film is amazing in my opinion, but the last scene is what makes it actually perfect. Sue, the girl who looked out for Carrie, is the one survivor of the whole movie. Carrie and her mother die when the house collapses. Sue goes to the rubble of Carrie’s house, and just as she reaches to put flowers over the “grave,” Carrie’s still-bloody hand reaches out from the rubble and grabs her. Sue then wakes up, shaking in her mother’s arms and sobbing. Sue may have survived, but the psychological scars from the event are a fate worse than death.

In this sense, I think the film is trying to get at the idea that no one is unharmed in bullying. Karma eventually catches up with the bullies, and the victims are harmed psychologically beyond repair. In the book, Sue writes a memoir warning people to never forget the events that took place at the prom. The book is a call for a harder cracking down on bullying, and I actually find it appropriate that they’re remaking it this year with Hugo and Kick-Ass’s Chloë Grace Moretz and The Big Lebowski and Crazy Stupid Love’s Julianne Moore.

The film was both a financial and critical success, it has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for 2 Oscars (Best Lead Actress for Sissy Spacek and Best Supporting Actress for the mother, Piper Laurie).

I could talk more about the thematic implications of the mother’s corrupted religious views, as we eventually find out that she only had sex once, when her boyfriend was drunk the night Carrie was conceived, and ever since has vowed to be pure. But I’m sort of shaken after seeing it so late at night, so I think I’m gonna go see if I can find a nightlight at my college bookstore.