Spirited Away is a spectacular work of fantasy animation. It became the all time number
one film in Japan and won bucketfuls of awards including the Nebula (Best Script), Hugo
(Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form), BAFTA (Best Film not in the English Language)
and Oscar (Best Animated Feature). It also won the admiration and praise of critics.
I certainly share in the admiration - but not necessarily in the praise.
The film begins peacefully enough, with a ten year old girl (Chihiro) and her parents
driving to their new home. On the way they become sidetracked and decide to investigate a
mysterious tunnel (a Japanese rabbit hole?). By this point - just a few minutes into the
film - the atmosphere is already building fast and my expectations were high. At this
stage there's nothing overtly supernatural just a lot of wonderful little touches.
Inside the tunnel, Chihiro and her parents find what appears to be run down theme park.
The adults make a classic error (they obviously haven't read any European fairy tales!) and Chihiro finds herself alone and trapped in the land of
the spirits. With the help of young Huku she must rescue her name, her parents and
herself.
At this stage I was in rapture. The animation is without doubt some of the best I've ever
seen, at once both fantastic and believable. The creatures and characters to whom we are
introduced are beautiful in the way that only the truly repulsive can manage.
Unfortunately it all starts to go wrong. There's nothing actually "bad" about
Spirited Away, it's just that the film loses its own way. There's no real underlying
story. We are introduced to different characters in a rather haphazard and piecemeal
fashion as Chihiro undergoes a series of challenges.
The spirit creatures are all, without exception,
beautifully imagined and brought to life. Unfortunately there's simply no narrative
drive. Even though most of the film takes place in the same location it manages to feel
like a fantasy road trip.
What we end up with is series of set pieces that don't really seem to have any direction.
We wander from one encounter to the next until we realise that we've reached the last one
and Chihiro has triumphed. If this was supposed to be some kind of metaphoric rite of
passage then it didn't seem to have changed Chihiro much.
Maybe it's a cultural thing - perhaps this is the Japanese style of story telling? If so
then I'm afraid it doesn't work for me.
Spirited Away is a triumph of imagination and the animator's art. But as a piece of story
telling it's a failure. It's a film that's certainly worth watching but it's not a
classic.
