A Look at Spirited Away
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Real magic, real terror, charm and warmth, bravery and silliness all have a welcome home in this tale of a little girl too cynical for her own good. Thrust into a world altogether more dangerous than her won, her challenge brings out the best in her, and earns a very happily ever after in a time when audiences all around the world genuinely long for one.
So just how certain am I that this isn’t the reaction of a starving man sniffing at a crust of bread? Suffice it to say that sitting a few seats away was a well-known and well-regarded treasure of animation and theme-park artistry and they were as agog and enchanted as I, if not more so. A well-traveled and sparkling sage of the many forms of artistic expression, and I don’t think they exhaled until it was over.
At the helm of the film is a team of master artists taking huge risks, embracing the myths of old and blending them fearlessly with the all too comfortable faith-less modern day. (When Chihiro’s Father stumbles upon what they realize is an abandoned theme park at the film’s start, we’re treated to a biting reminder that "they built them everywhere in the early 90’s." ) This is all served up on a platter of epic proportions populated by ghosts and goblins of every imaginable shape and size!
The characters are charming and complicated. The impossible is never explained away, and instead we’re asked to accept everything just as Chihiro encounters it. Western purist that I am, never once was I bothered by the technical differences in the approach to animating on ones and twos that heretofore has made me such and anti-anime-ist. Anyway, pigeonholing "Spirited Away" as Anime is insulting. It is wholly original and steps outside of all boundaries.
The layouts alone for this film are, perhaps, the most exciting and original work I’ve seen since "Sleeping Beauty." And yet, to compare either to the other, or to any other for that matter, is to reduce them all. Here is scenic material that takes its inspiration from great films that have come before it and still feels original.
Art Director Yoji Takeshige’s genius for breathtaking imagery abounds, so visual junkies take note. In paying homage over and over again Miyazaki and Takeshige never insult us by simply borrowing or stealing, but instead opening up what feel like familiar images and honoring them with a humble bow, and a fresh and masterful brush stroke. We are treated to the rebuilding of the monoliths of our nightmares and our fantasies, the opening up bucolic landscapes and impossibly surreal dreamscapes all in the same film. Michiyo Yasuda’s color styling supports this vision with a palette you’ll swear you’ve only dreamt until now.
Here too, sound cradles the film rather than smothers it (thanks to the loving re-recording mix by Terry Porter) and silence - yes, remember silence in animated films? You know, no music, faith in the power of the image, faith in the audience? Long, long silence where the camera simply travels with our heroine’s eyes which have become our eyes.
I want to describe every frame to you. I ache to give you details of the story, and I want to relive every moment and every cut. But I refuse to give one moment of this film away or try to revisit it in something as impossibly feeble as mere words.
What I can and will do is point to the influence Miyazaki has had on western film makers like Kirk Wise, John Lasseter, Richard Williams and others. And so clearly they too have had influence on him. (I’ve already mentioned "Pinocchio", and it’s impossible not to think of John Williams and Corney Cole and their beautiful and often forgotten "Raggedy Ann & Andy" when looking at the design of characters like Yubaba and the Assistant Manager. The film opens with a marvelous homage to another cinematic heroine (albeit not an animated one) lost in a strange land: the very first shot is a close-up of a bouquet of bright pink poppies.)
But the influences extend beyond the world of film, as a more literate animated feature would be hard to find. I applaud Miyazaki for working so hard to develop his audience, and for other equally brave directors like Wise and Trousdale and Clements and Musker who have risked box-office for the sake of returning us to something more intelligent.
Now, I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me rattle off platitudes. But before I sit down I want to challenge the anit-Atlantis apostles and high-priests of anti-Stitch to interrupt their preachings of "too many characters" and "too implausible a blend of real and fantasy" to step off their boxes long enough to remember reading Dickens and Baum, Swift and Carroll, Tolkien and Goethe. Remember when we expected as much from our cinema?
As for the English dubbing in this Disney supervised U.S. release of the film, insofar as I’m able to tell nothing is lost in this translation. If you speak Japanese, then you are privileged indeed to hear the original (screenings at the El Capitan here in Los Angeles alternated between dubbed and non-dubbed) but, if not, you are debilitated not the least thanks to the slaving of the project’s director, Kirk Wise, and the Producer and Executive producer, Don Ernst and John Lasseter respectively. We’re also lucky to have some of the best vocal performances any dubbing ever received; Suzanne Pleshette and Susan Egan chief among them. Because Miyazaki himself breaks the traditional approach, and animates first, fitting the dialogue to the animator’s performance - yes you read that correctly -it works perfectly here. The English translators Donald and Cindy Davis Hewitt have done wonderful work.
After seeing "Spirited Away", I brought my fresh eye and full heart to re-viewings of films like "Atlantis" and "Mulan." I watched them as if for the very first time. I appreciate Disney - both old and new - more than ever now for the influence it has wielded and the influence it has so freely absorbed in its striving for something more than just "a new technological innovation with each successive film…blah, blah blah…..*snore*." At the same time I’ve grown more aware than ever of how little American audiences have been trusted to follow complicated stories and running times longer than 80 minutes (primarily, or so I strongly suspect, because "someone" failed to trust the directors and producers who would have willingly taken us further.) I now see a shadowy and pompous hand from on high whose disinterested meddling has grown more visible with each feature. I’m compelled to quote from the live theatre that seems so much more important to a certain someone than animation, and in the words of Stephen Sondheim shout "Go! Won’t you go ?!"
Alas, brothers and sisters, I ask you to pray for Walt Disney Feature Animation that it may be free to realize its yet unrealized potential. And I wish for all of you that you may get to see "Spirited Away." When you do, please answer me this: Why should we reduce the possibilities of our home-grown animation talent when we have yet to fully expand them? Why have we let them fall prey to a false prophet who doesn’t believe in animation (and never really did)?
Take heart. Ghibli translates as "hot desert wind" and it’s blowing with change. Plus, we have "Treasure Planet" on the horizon, which will prove for once that contractual obligations can sometimes deliver magic. So I say AMEN!
Discuss It
-- Story by Rhett Wickham
-- Posted September 24, 2002
Rhett Wickham is a frequent contributor and regular columnist with LaughingPlace.,com. He works as a writer, story editor and development professional in Los Angeles. Prior to moving to LA, Rhett worked as an actor and stage director in New York City following graduate studies at Tisch School of the Arts. He is a directing fellow with the Drama League of New York, and nearly a decade ago he founded AnimActing © ®™ to teach and coach acting, character development and story analysis to animators, story artists and layout artists - work he continues both privately and through workshops in Los Angeles, New York and Orlando. He can be reached through actingforanimators@earthlink.net <mailto:actingforanimators@earthlink.net>.
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