By Onysius
First of all I'd like to say I don't usually do reviews, so I hope you like it..
Warn anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet. THIS IS A WORLDS BIGGEST SPOILER! From the legendary Studio Ghibli and anime director Hayao Miyazaki (the guy behind "Princess Mononoke," "Castle in the Sky," and "Kiki's Delivery Service") comes a new masterpiece, a movie that is loved by a lot of "children" of all ages..
Spirited Away takes influences from "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz" and uses
them to fashion a highly original story about a young Japanese girl named Chihiro (literally, "heroine" but that has nothing to do with the story).
That is as you might have though from the title, taken from here normal live and put into the magical spirit world. Chihiro overcomes fear and other obstacles, including a large, faceless monster and a black-hearted witch named Yubaba (literally, "old hag" and she is!) to save her parents from a rather unpleasant fate. The story is exciting, well-paced, and thoughtful, with a good mix of humor, symbolism, emotion, traditional Japanese legend, and moral. And the sound is great, especially when watching the movie in Dolby 5.1 on DVD. Chihiro is the typical ten-year-old girl, especially when it comes to moving to a new house and a new way of life.
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Already frightened and unsure about the future Chihiro is confronted with a new challenge when her father misses the turnoff to their new home and winds up at the entrance of a seemingly abandon theme park.
Chihiro
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"It's an abandon theme park . . . they built them everywhere in the early nineties. Then the economy went bad, and they all went bankrupt. This must be one of them..."
The night approaches as Chihiro's parents decide to investigate. They cross a long field of grass and go on over a dried-up river. And then pickup on the scent of food lingering in the air, hungry from the long trip to there new home they decide to follow there noses.. After several minutes of looking they find several steaming dishes of food at a counter.
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Chihiro's parents decide to help themselves, even at the requests of Chihiro to leave. Paying no attention to her Chihiro decides to go for a walk and shortly after runs into the mysterious young character, Haku, who hastily insists that she leave before dark. But it is too late. Large, ghostlike shadows begin to appear out of encroaching dusk. Chihiro gets scared and decides to runs to where her parents are eating, only to find two enormous pigs where her parents once sat. Horrified, Chihiro calls out their names to no avail. She tries to run away, only to find the dried-up river she had crossed earlier, is now a lake.. Here Chihiro gives up on live and for the first time in here live has now one to lean on.
I know most folks are now thinking.. "this is another one of them "coming of age" stories". Well your part right.. Yes the movie is probably made for kiddies to teach them to have faith
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and be good, but though the characters are drawn, the essence they encapsulate is so much more than people give credit for. The stories are deep, enthralling, and touching. They strike at the very chord of human imagination, and all its capacities. After the first five minutes of this movie,
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Haku
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I forgot I was watching "cartoon" characters and began to see them as real people, which ironically happens in just about all of Miyazaki's films.
Miyazaki redefines the genre of animation by giving thought into every aspect of his work. The backgrounds are rich in detail and deep in soul. Every shot has been specifically placed to tell the story in its amazing entirety. In fact Miyazaki personally checks and re-checks every drawing that will be placed in the final cut. Animation allows the plot to shine and Miyazaki's original concepts to surface in a way that has never been done before. This is a man that takes pride in his work, and it is a fact that is strongly evident in every epic he creates.
..but now Chihiro must find a job or risk being turned into a pig herself. At Haku's (Yubaba's right hand man) insistence, she visits Kamaji, an old man with spider-like arms who runs the bathouse's boiler room and asks him for work. At first he just thinks Chihiro's lazy and tells here there aren't any jobs affable, but when Lin comes in to bring Kamaji something to eat he desides to help her.. She brings her all the way trough the bathhouse to Yubaba herself, a mean-spirited old woman with a giant head (really really big!) who puts her to work and gives her a new name. In this world, no one can go by their own name and Yubaba renames her Sen (meaning 'one thousand') than slowly she begins to forget here real name...
Her initiation comes in a standout scene where she is confronted with every bath house employee's worst nightmare "Okutaresama", a river god covered in stinking putrid sludge.
The beautiful Yubaba
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(bubbling and dripping of his body...) Whom Sen/Chihiro not only gets into the bath but liberates from the bicycles, oil vats and refrigerators that have been dumped inside it over the years. Admirably built up, this scene is exhilarating, funny, tense and touching at the same time (while the eco-friendly comment inherent in the character of Okutaresama is far more effective as an environmentalist message than all the non-stop hammering of Princess Mononoke).
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Than one morning Chihiro sneaks out of the bathhouse to meet Haku, and they go and see Chihiro's parents (the pigs) and Chihiro notices a goodbye card from a friend with her name on it. Haku tells here to keep it save and they decide to go back to the bathhouse before anyone notices they where gone. Before Chihiro enters the bathhouse she looks back at where she left Haku and sees a dragon flying away.. One morning Chihiro looks out the window and sees the dragon again badly hurt and being chased by birds. She doesn't hesitate and calls him, as soon as the dragon enters Chihiro's room she closes the door and all the paper birds are stopped! Except for one that clings to her back, she desides to go to Yubaba's room this being the most likely place Haku would go. There he was lying on the ground, the paper bird on Chihiro's back lets go and transforms into Zeniiba (Yubaba's twin). She tells here that Haku stole her magic goldenseal andturns Yubaba's baby into a fat rat, than Haku lift his head and breaks Zeniiba in two (papercut) and falls into a hole to the boiler room. Chihiro decides to follows the dragon to the boiler-room. On the ground she finds the dragon/Haku badly hurt.. she decides to give him half of a special medicine given to her by the river spirit. And it works Haku coughs out a magic goldenseal, but Haku is still unconscious but in human form again.. Zeniiba supposedly put a curse on the seal, which made Haku deathly ill. Kamaji than tells Chihiro that Zeniiba is a very scary witch and how to get to Zeniiba, than hands here some train tickets..
Chihiro and No Face on the train to Zeniiba...
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And than No face goes berserk, eating everything and everyone.. And only wants to talk to Chihiro, so Yubaba sends for Chihiro on the double! Lin sees Chihiro and grabs here by the arm, while running she tells here about No face and than drops here of.. Chihiro gives No face the other half of the medicine and he starts throwing up, while chasing Chihiro through the bathhouse no face shrinks to normal size..
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Chihiro runs of to the train station and no face follows, as soon as no face is out of the bathhouse he turns back to normal and Chihiro decides to take him with her to Zeniiba. They find out that Zeniiba's the good one in the family and she tells Chihiro to call her granny, When Chihiro tells here about Haku and the poison she begins to laugh, because only love can heal him. At that moment Haku comes flying to Zeniiba's house and apologises for stealing the seel. They have a cup of tea and decide to head back to the bathhouse. While flying Chihiro remembers something from when she was jong, she fell into the river and the current brought here back to shore.. That current was Haku and the rivers name was "kohaku River" Than Haku rembers his name!
When Yubaaba found out that her baby was missing she was furious. Haku manages to make a deal he would get the baby back and in return Yubaaba must set free Sen and her parents. And when they got back to Yubaba the little black bird turned back into a baby.. But Yubaba had one more trick up her sleeve, Chihiro had to pick out her parents out of a bunch of pigs. Chihiro didn't recognise them and told Yubaba they weren't there and they weren't. So Yubaba had to keep here end of the deal and sent Chihiro and here parents free..
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The problem of child rearing is broached here not only in the relationship between Chihiro and her parents at the start of the film, in which the girl carries a sense of detachment from her parents, but also in the portrayal of the overprotective care of Yubaba for her giant baby, which says that the problem is not entirely to blame on the attitude of the children. Indeed, the story revolves around how the jaded child of the film's opening scene changes her own life by using her own abilities for kindness, endurance, devotion and honesty.
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Kamaji, Lin and the other people of the bathhouse
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It's with these tools and a bit of help from others that she surmounts the challenges and obstacles on her path, including the policy of name changes decreed by Yubaba, which constitutes nothing less than an Orwellian method to rob people's identities and force them into submission. This has had its effect on the other employees of the bathhouse, who are driven by fear and greed and the constant demands of their work. Chihiro on the other hand doesn't judge anyone on appearance or reputation, but on character. Since her inner self is her only tool, she never falls victim to Yubaba's program of enslavement. Chihiro's survival depends on her self-discovery. That's what I think anyway, but this is a movie you have to see for yourself and experience it.. Have fun!
Onysius (Henkie)
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