I'm a big Hayao Miyazaki fan. His ability to create sweeping yet intimate stories -- not to mention that gorgeous animation -- is pretty much unparalled. Thus, I was excited to see his latest opus at the 2002 San Francisco International Film Festival, in the confines of the Castro Theatre, which is a must-visit for any cinemagoers (especially since its future is very much in doubt, I hear). Spacious music hall interiors, arching pillars, live organ tunes on the premises, high domed ceilings -- this is what movegoing should be all about.
The two major questions Miyazaki aficionados will have about this film are: 1) How well does it stack up against his other movies? And 2) Does it have a shot of hitting it big in the States? The answers, in order:
Spirited Away is in many ways, an experimental Miyazaki film. All the usual touches are in evidence, but the story is more oblique, more dreamy. We follow Chihiro, a timid young girl who stumbles across an abandoned theme park with her parents. It turns out the theme park is the entrance to another world, and Chihiro finds herself stranded there, left to fend for herself when her gluttonous parents are fittingly transformed into pigs. What happens afterwards follows fairy tale logic, as Chihiro makes friends with the unearthly denizens of this new world, has her soul sold to the preening, threatening Yubaba (think the Mad Hatter crossed with the Wicked Witch of the West), and eventually must depend on a shape-shifting dragon, a crotchety eight-armed steambath engineer, and her own pluck to survive and save her parents.
This film is more contemplative than Princess Mononoke, and can be read as the summation of Miyazaki's entire career, melding the adventurous elements of his earlier work (Nausicaa, Laputa) with the childlike (as opposed to childish) sentiments of My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, with a dash of Mononoke's grit and scope. Some the film's sequences rank with his greatest work, especially a scene in which Chihiro must work in Yubaba's bathhouse and attend to a very large and very stinky guest. The conclusion to this passage is jaw-dropping from an animation standpoint, but also slips in a sly environmental message which is much more subtle than the sometimes ham-handed sermonizing of Mononoke. Elsewhere, Miyazaki utilizes short bursts of CGI, but they are subtle and seamless -- dig the gorgeous scenes involving the train, or the endless flower garden.
Anyone who likes Miyazaki's films will have a fine time at this one, but I would have to rank it slightly below Kiki's, Mononoke, and Porco Rosso on my personal list of favorites. Ultimately, what keeps the movie from being his best is a lack of rigor in the storytelling. Certain elements (such as a supposedly magical circlet of yarn) are introduced that seem destined for a payoff, but nothing happens. These might have been overlooked if the film had an anything-goes atmosphere, but Miyazaki is too fine a craftsman, too precise a director, to ever create that type of movie. The narrative drive and suspense of his other movies have dissipated here; what we're left with is a tantalizing, if sometimes inexplicable, look into the dream world of a child. But that's no small achievement; like all great artists, Miyazaki always plugs into something universal, and that something is the youth in all of us.
So how will it do in the States? Sadly, not too well, I reckon. Getting past the references to Japanese folklore and such, the film, like Mononoke, cannot be easily pegged and marketed for a specific audience. It's too laid back to qualify as a "gee-whiz" kid adventure, and the animation stigma will probably prevent adults from giving it too close a look. But does it really matter whether Miyazaki conquers the U.S.? As long as he continues making films (and his producer, who was present at the screening, says that he has at least three more productions in mind, including a movie about a caterpillar making a journey from one tree to another -- hmm, intriguing …), that should be good enough for the rest of us. [Postscript: Well, looks like I was quite wrong about this film making any kind of impact in America, as it won the 2003 Oscar for best animated feature. With DVD versions of his previous films finally hitting our shores, it's a good time to be a Miyazaki fan.]
