Miyazaki Madness, Part 9: Why "Spirited Away" is my favorite movie
Masterpieces don't come more towering than this
On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with my favorite movie ever, 2001’s Spirited Away. Enjoy…
Spirited Away
2001, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Originally written September 26th, 2023 for the book 200 Reviews
“What’s your favorite film?” is a difficult-bordering-on-impossible question, but if you’re in a position to regularly be asked it, you might as well have an answer. For a long time now, mine has been Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 masterpiece Spirited Away, and it has always felt like a good and honest one. Few movies mean as much to me, and few have impacted my thinking on the medium and its boundaries – and, thus, my life and work in and around cinema – as much as Spirited Away.
And yet, somehow, I have never written about this film at any real length. I’ve given lectures on it, I’ve talked about it on podcasts, I’ve brought it up in a million contexts – but I realized, when putting this book together and finding I had reviews of every other Hayao Miyazaki feature, some published and some not, sitting in my archives, that Spirited Away was, ironically, the odd film out. Every time I’ve sat down to actually write about Spirited Away, to put my feelings about my favorite movie into words, I have found the blank screen before me impossibly daunting, a mountain I cannot figure out where to start climbing.
This isn’t just because I love the film so immensely, though that is of course part of it. What’s really challenging is that Spirited Away is as big a movie as I have ever seen – not in terms of length or scale or budget, but in terms of density, in the sheer number of ideas and emotions packed into it, in the way that it feels like a slightly different film every time I go back to it, always unfolding and opening up to me in new and surprising ways. It is both amusing and serendipitous that this film came out the same year as Mulholland Drive, a film that occupies a similar position in David Lynch’s filmography as Spirited Away does in Hayao Miyazaki’s; neither is their respective director’s ‘final’ movie, but each comes far enough along in their career that it feels like both a breakthrough and a culmination, a film where the auteur managed a complete and total expression of their singular, inimitable vision of the world through film, one so vast and all-encompassing, so limitless in what it expresses, that lovers of their work will never stop grappling with it. Everything that is David Lynch is tucked somewhere inside Mulholland Drive, and everything that is Hayao Miyazaki is hiding around a corner in Spirited Away. These are my favorite films by my two favorite living directors, and they are totalizing, grand, epochal works, the kinds of movies that will take more than one generation or one lifetime for the artform of cinema and the culture surrounding it to really wrap their heads around.
I remember vividly the moment I decided that if I had to have a favorite film, Spirited Away would be it. There is a series hosted by the Denver Film Society called ‘Film on the Rocks,’ where movies are shown at the world-famous Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison; Red Rocks is just about five miles from the house I grew up in, and it is no exaggeration to say it is one of the single greatest concert venues on planet Earth, an open-air theater built amidst a massive range of red sandstone, with natural acoustics superior to anything you’ll find in a man-made arena. On August 13th, 2012, Spirited Away was the Film on the Rocks selection; I had become a pretty big Miyazaki fan at that point, but I had always had a more contentious relationship with Spirited Away, disliking it when it first came to the US in 2002, and gradually warming to it as I saw more of the director’s work.
But on this night, I saw it with – to borrow a phrase from Miyazaki himself – eyes unclouded. I went with my friend Lexi, and we got there in time to see the musician who played before the sun went down (an indie artist named Meiko, whose CDs I bought and got signed after the show, and who I still follow today – she’s great). Then, once dusk had fallen, the film played, on a 35mm print on the massive screen erected atop the concert stage; something about seeing it in that specific context, with the majesty of the red rocks themselves surrounding us, with the best and most all-enveloping sound you could ever ask for, and with Table Mesa and the Denver skyline and everything beyond it stretched out to a seemingly infinite distance behind and around the screen, the scale of the movie was imparted to me in a way it had not been before. This wasn’t the first or last time I went to Film on the Rocks, but it was the only time the experience truly unlocked something about the specific film being shown, a quality in it I could not otherwise put my finger on. When Sen looks out at the ocean surrounding the bathhouse at night to see the infinite and empty horizon, and when she later journeys into that expanse on the sea train cutting through the water, I could look beyond the screen and see a similarly vast natural horizon; it was, in the truest sense of the word, sublime. Beautiful, and daunting, and inspiring, and terrifying, and true. This film felt like it was capturing some fragment of infinity.
Spirited Away is, on its most basic level, a film about childhood and coming into one’s sense of self, to fashion both an identity and a community strong enough to rely upon amidst life’s challenges, and it is a better and more powerful film on that subject than any other film I can name. That would be plenty enough for one film, but Miyazaki reaches for more. Spirited Away is also a statement and a story about Miyazaki’s politics and ideas on community, with Yubaba and the bathhouse forming a sort of ‘fallen’ communist utopia, a place where everyone works and contributes in equal share, that has been corrupted by greed and the efficiency mindset of factories and industry. Yubaba has been gifted the power to uplift and empower those around her, and it has been contorted to instead dispirit and anonymize the bathhouse’s denizens, like Chihiro. This society is fundamentally out of balance. No Face, the formless spirit Sen lets in out of a child’s unthinking kindness, is a mirror to this society. It does not act, but only reflects, and what it manifests is endless consumerism: greed, sloth, and hunger, all crystallized within the gold he pours out across the bathhouse. I don’t think it’s talked about enough in this way, but Spirited Away is stridently political, a movie where we get a microcosm of a society and see how it has fallen, and then see it purged of that which has corrupted it; Sen guides No Face out of the Bathhouse through the detritus of capitalism he has shed all around him, and opens a path to redemption – for both the society of the Bathhouse and the spirit doomed to reflect – in the journey she then takes.
Which, of course, dovetails perfectly with the core story about childhood, because one of the great sadnesses of the film – tapping into one of the great tragedies of life – is that the weight of this world’s sins fall on the shoulders of a child who fell into this realm by no fault of her own. What makes Chihiro/Sen admirable, the thing that has always rooted Miyazaki’s pessimism about human society in something that feels like hope, is that she takes on this challenge all the same, and rises to it fully. We feel grief for the death of the more innocent self that cannot survive this ordeal, and we are in awe of the resilient person she becomes instead. And of course, we see ourselves in her, because no matter how fantastical its imagery, all Miyazaki is really showing us is what it means to grow up in a profoundly imperfect world.
This is why the film feels so big. Its themes are mixed so perfectly with its emotions, and its emotions are so hard to pin down. I find Spirited Away at turns heartbreaking and euphoric, frightening and uplifting, sometimes all in one viewing, sometimes on alternating viewings. It taps into the full gamut of the complex emotions we encounter as we come into this world and come to discover our place amidst its cruelty and failings, and it captures a greater slice of that emotional truth than any two-hour film should possibly be able to achieve. It is a marvel, and a miracle.
Here is something you will not hear me say every day: I like the English-language dub of Spirited Away. I actually like it quite a bit. When I saw it at Red Rocks, the moment at which it became my favorite film, that was the version screened; clearly, it did nothing to diminish the awe the film inspired. In terms of faithfulness in adaptation and quality of casting and vocal performance, Disney’s Spirited Away dub is about as good as this kind of thing gets, but there is one crucial thing it gets wrong: the ending. The dub adds two lines over the last image, as Chihiro and her family drive away, with Chihiro’s dad asking about the challenges of a new home and a new school, and Chihiro cheekily replying “I think I can handle it,” implying she remembers everything that happened in the Bathhouse. The original Japanese version has no dialogue here, and it is implied through the visuals that Chihiro does not remember the film’s events, does not remember being Sen – though it is not so simple as a binary between remembering and forgetting. The critical image of the ending, the dénouement of the film, is the shot of Chihiro looking back at the tunnel leading to the other world before getting in her parents’ car; while we do not hear her thoughts, we can read them in the impossibly deep, rich animation. Clearly, she knows there was something important back there, senses a powerful, almost magnetic pull from her past calling out to her, but she cannot put her finger on what it was. Unable to grasp onto it, she chooses instead to move forward; a brief glint of light shining off the hair tie made by for her by Zeniba tells the audience it was all real, and that these experiences are something she will carry with her, whether she is cognizant of them or not.
That’s childhood, of course – this thing we very much live through, that scars us and shapes us and stays with us, whether or not we remember the details of it, whether we think about it or confront it. There is a sadness to the idea that Chihiro will go back into the world and have to do all this again, not remembering she did it all before; but there is also a joy knowing she will be fine, because we’ve just seen her do it, and she came out of this gauntlet a better, stronger, and more fully-shaped human than she was before. Memory or no, she is not the same Chihiro we saw at the beginning; Sen still lives inside her. Disney’s dub fumbles at the one-yard line with an ironic joke, meant to relieve the complex emotions of the finale with a chuckle; Miyazaki sends us into the credits with a stirring ambiguity that touches upon some indefinable, unnamable aspect of life itself.
The beauty of Spirited Away, on so many dimensions, cannot be overstated. In its animation, its backgrounds, its voice acting, its music, and its imagination. The film is rife with images that haunt me – the expanse of that ocean surrounding the bathhouse, the idea of a train cutting through the night over the water. Joe Hisaishi’s score is awash in sounds I will never be able to shake – the opening piano notes of the main theme, delivered with Hisaishi’s characteristic gentleness, suggest an entire world all on their own. So much of Spirited Away lives with me and in me, in ways I can scarcely express.
The ‘Journey to the Sixth Station’ scene, in which Sen and her merry band of spirits and small animals travel by train through the night, is probably my single favorite sequence in any movie (and Hisaishi’s score for this scene is also, quite possibly, the greatest piece of music ever written and performed for film). Here we see the intersection of sadness, of mystery, of strength, of adventure, that so defines this movie, and Miyazaki as a filmmaker. I am touched by the quiet bonds of friendship expressed here, of this little found family full of misfits and outcasts – and even, in some ways, ‘villains,’ as No Face might be viewed by the denizens of the bathhouse, or Yubaba’s crow might be seen in a simpler version of this story – that Sen has redeemed through basic empathy, accompanying her on a journey quite literally into the unknown. The train, which is both out of time – it is an older ferry-style train, its conductor checking tickets with a little hand-cranked machine – and out of space – it cuts through water across places seemingly too vast to be connected – is a sort of ur-train, an eternal signal of progress, of society and socialization, transporting Sen into the night. She does not go alone. There is of course the iconic shot of Sen sitting quietly with No Face, both facing forward, while the mouse and the tiny bird look excitedly out the window at the ocean beyond. The scene culminates, though, with an even more powerful shot, of Sen staring ahead, stoically and single-mindedly, into the night, a premonition of the film’s ending where she looks, with a similar expression of inscrutable determination, back at the tunnel; here, though, she is mirrored in the window behind her, a second Sen – or maybe Chihiro – sitting alongside her. Even when she is alone, she has herself, and sometimes that will have to be enough.
There is a second reflection for Sen in this sequence, and it is, I think, the film’s most haunting image. Everyone else on the train, and on the platforms the train stops at, is a sort of ‘shadow person,’ a ghostly dark apparition. Not a ‘spirit,’ the way we came to understand them in the Bathhouse, but other people, out on their own journeys – maybe in our reality, or other realities besides the two Chihiro has crossed through, reflected back into this space, this train carrying them all throughout creation. At one stop, we get a cut from Sen’s perspective, looking back at the platform, where we see a ‘shadow girl’ standing still by the wooden fence. Her body is a dark silhouette, but we can faintly see her clothes, a yellow sweater and dark pink skirt. Her hands are joined in front of her waist, which, combined with the slight upward glance she has at the train, suggests a stance of anxiety, or anticipation. Sen’s gaze here is our gaze too, and there is a soft, shared recognition between all parties – we, Sen, and the girl all seem to recognize each other. This shadowy figure is a ‘present absence,’ or maybe an ‘absent presence,’ the unspoken and partially unseen presence haunting both the film and Sen’s journey – the truth is that she is but one lonely little girl out on a journey on these tracks.
Here, Miyazaki extends his story out into infinity: Sen/Chihiro is one child, but the shadow could be anyone. Part of growing up, and part of Sen’s journey here on this train, is recognizing that we are not alone, and that any pain we have felt or challenge we have faced has probably been felt before, and is being felt by someone else right now. Being a good person, or even just a functioning one, means recognizing the mass of others out there on their own journeys, shadows in the night passing by unseen. Noticing them can be daunting, overwhelming even – and also a source of strength, as I think it is here. ‘Who is she?’, we may ask of the shadow girl. We don’t know, but at the same time, of course we do. That’s why her momentary presence is so ineffably powerful.
The entire film is rife with doubling and duality, partners and twins and distorted mirrors. Every character has two sides, and most of them have a doppelgänger. Chihiro is also Sen, and she is also the shadow girl on the platform. Yubaba is a spiteful boss, and also a loving, albeit smothering, mother; and she is also Zeniba, who is warm, good, and fair. These potentialities all live side by side. In the grand expanse of creation, they are all one part of a larger expression. Haku is kind, caring, and heroic, but also cold, distant, and violent; in the spirit world, he takes the form of both a teenage boy and an awe-inspiring dragon, and in ‘our’ world, he is the Kohaku River. He is of our world, and he is of the spirit world, and in whatever form Chihiro/Sen meets him, the encounter is meaningful – in both worlds, they save the life of the other. Everything is alive, and all of it matters. All of it mixes, and coalesces, and breaks apart again, sent back to the train tracks to go out and find connection once more – like Miyazaki’s film itself, it is so many things at once, searching all the while, yet also solidly, resolutely itself. Spirited Away is life.
NEXT WEEK: Miyazaki makes another movie with the word ‘Castle’ in the title, and it’s another banger - Howl’s Moving Castle…
All Miyazaki Madness Pieces:
If you liked this review, I have 200 more for you – read my new book, 200 Reviews, in Paperback and on Kindle: https://a.co/d/bivNN0e
Support the show at Ko-fi ☕️ https://ko-fi.com/weeklystuff
Subscribe to JAPANIMATION STATION, our podcast about the wide, wacky world of anime: https://www.youtube.com/c/japanimationstation
Subscribe to The Weekly Stuff Podcast on all platforms: