Review: Spirited Away

Spirited Away, or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, is a made-for-Japan animated film that has now made it across the Pacific. Famed director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are well-known for producing exceptional films, and this one is outstanding. It made some vast amount of money in Japan, and U.S. critics are raving about it, but it probably isn't showing in your neighborhood: it's opening in ten large cities this week, a few more next week, and perhaps still more the week after that. There's a proprietary-format trailer available.

Let's get a few things out of the way first. There's both a subtitled version with Japanese audio, and an English-dubbed version. The dubbed version appears to be showing in more theaters, with the subtitled version only showing in a very few locations. I saw the subtitled one, not because I'm a purist (I usually prefer the dubbed versions so my eyes can concentrate on the animation rather than having to read), but just because it was showing at a convenient time, so I can't comment on the quality of the English dub.

The film might be too intense for very young viewers in a few places. One theater nearby has a note saying they won't allow kids under six to attend - I have no idea how they came up with that age, but there's definitely a few scenes that could be frightening to very young kids. You might want to watch it ahead of time, or at least be prepared to hold them tight.

And on to the film. It is excellent. Several of Miyazaki's other films have had themes involving the spirits of nature, and this is a continuation of those. Other tales it made me think of: Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia in general), The Neverending Story, and the tale of Circe the Enchantress in the Odyssey. You remember Circe, don't you, the sorceress who turned Odysseus' men into pigs? No doubt if I knew more about Japanese legends I would see lots of places that Miyazaki drew from there as well.

The basic plot is simple: Chihiro's parents stumble into a place they shouldn't be, and get turned into pigs, and she must save them. I'm not going to elaborate on it because I really enjoyed discovering what was going on throughout the movie and I'd rather not spoil it for you. There's a happy ending - this isn't a Grave of the Fireflies - so you don't have to worry about your kids being permanently traumatized.

Everything about the film says that a great deal of effort was put into it. Tiny details are included in every frame of the animation. There's a pretty extensive use of CGI for rendering background man-made objects (nature backgrounds are mostly drawn), but it fits in very well with the hand-drawn art and adds rather than detracts from the movie. I don't know how I can really convey the difference between this and a typical Disney animated film... Maybe this: think about how, in the Lion King or a similar movie, there are often large swatches of a similar color taking up large parts of the screen. Oh, here's a lion, and it has three square feet of an absolutely pure tan color (which, incidentally, takes very little effort to draw). An equivalent lion in a Miyazaki film would have a hundred shades of color and streaks and details and highlights and lowlights, and it would have that in every frame that it appeared in. The colors are brighter, the whites are whiter. (Note that apparently the subtitled version I saw is being shown in a digital projection, while the dubbed version is traditional film.)

You don't have to like anime to like this movie - it will be fun for nearly all ages. It's not quite as endearing as Totoro, not quite as mystical as Mononoke (well, maybe it is, at that). But it's definitely as good as either of these. Well worth seeing in the theaters.

Comments

Spirited Away

[yar]

Nausicca.net has release dates (with sub/dub info).

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) is a really great film. To answer a person's earlier comment, no, Disney has not edited the film in any way. The only real change in the dub has been some "offscreen" English dialog to better explain ome of the cultural references that English-speaking audiences might not get. But they are very well done and don't take away from the rest of the film. Actually, I liked this dub much better than the dub for Princess Mononoke, and while it's not quite as accurate as the subtitled version it's still very good.

As far as the "scary" scenes- I wouldn't have a problem allowing children to watch this movie. There are intense scenes, but there are intense moments in many children's stories- Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretal, etc. These scenes are a bit scarier than the Disneyfied versions of the same stories, but I'd say they are pretty comparable.

Even friends that are not huge anime fans loved it.

Rant: Little kids at movies.

[IvyMike]

One theater nearby has a note saying they won't allow kids under six to attend.

I love that policy, and in fact, I'd like to extend it to ALL movies, except rated-G movies shown before 8 at night. And nobody below tweleve gets into an R-rated movie even with a parent.

Partially, it's that I just don't like kids interrupting my movie with an inappropriate reaction. I don't think it's cute when little Johnnie makes fart noises, or cries that he's bored, or does anything at all to distract me from the movie experience. Maybe that's my problem, but I should be able to find a time and place where I'll have a kid-free movie.

But the other part of that policy is that some parents take their kids to inappropriate movies at inappropriate times.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with people these days, but I see more and more R-rated movies where people have brought their small children. One of the first times this happened to me was during the film "Three Days in the Valley". During the violent sex scene between the hit man Spader and his girlfriend Charlize Theron, a small girl (probably about five) cried out, "Mommy, why is he doing that?" It almost would have been funny, except for the fact that you realized a young girl was being traumatized, and her parents didn't care.

Another thing I've seen is parents taking their children to late-night viewings of movies. I've gone to see things like "Toy Story" at the 10pm showing, just because I figure, "No sane parent would take their kids to a 10pm showing, since they won't be home until after midnight." Of course I'm always wrong, even if the kids look to be school-aged and it's during the school year!

Look, I'm not a parent, and I know sometimes parenting is harder than it looks, blahblahblah, but this stuff seems like it should be common sense. If you take your eight-year old to see Blade 2, not only will it annoy me, it's going to warp his world view.