Spirited Away – (2002) In Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s animated cinema, an apathetic, anxious ten-year-old girl Chihiro is moving to a new home with her parents. (The principal characters have Western rather than Asian features, which is typical of Japanese anime since Western features are more favorable to audiences.) The family stops on the way to the new residence to explore what appears to be an abandoned amusement park; the aroma of food lures Chihiro’s mother and father into an all-they-can-eat-serve-themselves restaurant while Chihiro wanders off to discover a bathhouse and a boy who warns her to leave before darkness.

When Chihiro returns to the restaurant, her parents have been transformed into enormous swine. In this suddenly fantastical world, phantoms arise from the shadows as Chihiro notices she can see through herself. The boy Haku returns and offers her a morsel, telling her: “You have to eat some food in this world or you’ll disappear.” He takes her across the bridge to the bathhouse (a spa for spirits to replenish themselves) where amphibious creatures see to the needs of the spirits. Chihiro meets Kamajii, a six-armed slave of the boiler room; Rin, to whom the girl becomes an assistant (“I don’t believe you pulled it off. You’re such a dope.”); Yubaba, the witch of the bathhouse, who calls her a lazy, spoiled, crybaby without manners, but finally agrees to give her a job in exchange for a contract, a promise never to complain, and a new name, Sen.

In performing her duties in the bathhouse – giving the stink spirit an herbal bath, saving everyone from the gluttonous No-Face monster – Sen becomes resourceful, courteous to others, and courageous. Haku, who also appears as a flying dragon, Sen rescues with her love from his wounds and a spell’s curse. On her way to getting her parents out of the pigpen and back to their human form, Sen must not forget her real name, deal with Big Baby, and visit Yubaba’s twin sister Zaneba.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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