The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Animation, fantasy

DIRECTOR

Hayao Miyazaki

WRITER

Hayao Miyazaki

STARS

Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki

BEFORE

1979 The Castle of Cagliostro, the tale of a clever thief, is Miyazaki’s first movie.

1984 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind stars a pacifist princess in a postapocalyptic world; its success leads to the creation of Studio Ghibli, home to a string of animation hits.

1997 Princess Mononoke is Miyazaki’s first movie to use computer graphics.

AFTER

2013 The Wind Rises tells the fictionalized life story of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi.

The animators at Tokyo’s Studio Ghibli—chief among them cofounder Hayao Miyazaki—have been making wildly inventive movies since 1986. With a highly distinctive style of animation influenced by the manga tradition of Japanese comic books, Studio Ghibli has expanded the tastes of audiences around the world.

Miyazaki’s Spirited Away brought Ghibli worldwide commercial success, and also acclaim—it was the first foreign-language animation film to win an Oscar. It was also a masterpiece of its genre, a glorious flight of imagination based on the idea of “the magical doorway” found in much children’s fiction. Children often see reality as something to be escaped from, and the genius of Spirited Away is allowing the child in everyone to do just that.

One subversive aspect of Spirited Away compared with Miyazaki’s other work and the fantasy genre as a whole is that the fantasy realm presented here is often anything but majestic. While it does feature wondrous magic and supernatural creatures, the movie also focuses on the harrowing day-to-day existence of the protagonist, a 10-year-old girl called Chihiro, as she is put to work in a bathhouse run by the witch Yubaba.

After a long train journey, Chihiro and the mysterious No-Face (left) have tea with Zeniba, the twin sister of the greedy and controlling witch Yubaba.

Real fantasy

While the magical realms depicted in children’s fiction are usually more dangerous than our own, populated as they are by strange and terrible monsters, they also come with a significant upside: the characters who wander into them will often be given a chance to win the crown or right some terrible wrong. In Spirited Away, however, not much changes: by the end of the movie, the tyrannical Yubaba still holds sway, and while Chihiro manages to escape, many others are left behind.

For all the movie’s sense of wonder, it is this grounding in reality, this refusal to whitewash the darker elements of life, that makes Spirited Away more poignant than many other fantasy tales. It’s not about defeating evil and creating a utopia, but instead about simply surviving and finding moments of happiness and compassion wherever you can.

The bizarre town that Chihiro wanders into is home to Japan’s legions of demons, spirits, and gods, where humans are turned into animals. Chihiro avoids the spell, but her parents do not.

Everyone has a story

Spirited Away strives to portray its characters in an evenhanded and nuanced fashion. It often introduces characters in quite a harsh light—from the seemingly unsympathetic coworker Rin to Zeniba, Yubaba’s sister and fellow witch—only to later reveal their caring side and humanity. Even No-Face, the quiet spirit who becomes the villain of the movie’s second act, is also portrayed sympathetically, in his desire to connect with Chihiro and his attempts to give her gifts to win her over. The boundless imagination that Miyazaki uses to create his fantastical worlds is matched by his endearing compassion for his characters—their strengths and flaws, dreams and fears—and this allows us to care about them as deeply as we marvel at them.

"This visual wonder is the product of a fierce and fearless imagination whose creations are unlike any you’ve seen before."

Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times, 2002

Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941; he and his family were evacuated to escape the US firebombing of Japanese cities. Miyazaki got his first job in animation in 1963, and made his directorial debut in 1979 with The Castle of Cagliostro. He rose to worldwide prominence almost 20 years later, with Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away, his follow-up, won him an Oscar and was perhaps his best-received movie. The Wind Rises, in 2013, was his last movie.

1997 Princess Mononoke

2001 Spirited Away

2013 The Wind Rises

What else to watch: Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) ✵ Grave of the Fireflies (1988) ✵ Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) ✵ Princess Mononoke (1997) ✵ The Cat Returns (2002) ✵ Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)