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DVD Tuesday: Spirited Away -- as moving as Wall-E
DVD Tuesday: Looking for more smart, emotionally resonant animation like Wall-E? Try Hayao Miyazaki's stunning Spirited Away!
As I've said in past columns, I'm not a huge fan of mainstream American animated features – overall, they're too frenetic and five-second-attention-span oriented for my taste. But Pixar's Wall-E is a reminder of how richly imagined animated films can be -- and that makes me think of Hayao Miyazaki's Oscar-winning Spirited Away (2001), a fable about family and friendship whose marvelous sights, from flying dragons to traditional Japanese radish spirits, should keep the most restless child enthralled.
And at the same time, its emotional truths are sophisticated enough to engage adults -- it's a real film for the whole family, as opposed to a juvenile romp studded with in-jokes and pop-culture references designed to keep grown ups awake.
Spoiled little Chihiro doesn't want to move to a new town and dedicates herself to making the drive there a misery for her parents. The family takes a wrong turn into a forbidding forest, and then impulsively decide to explore a hillside tunnel which, to their delighted surprise, opens into a theme park modeled after a traditional Japanese village. Though the place looks abandoned, the concession stands are fully stocked, and while Chihiro explores, her parents indulge.
Chihiro runs into a slightly older boy named Haru, who warns her to get out before it gets dark, but she's never listened to anyone and isn't about to start. Come nightfall, she realizes that she's trapped and that her parents have been turned into pigs.
The theme park, it turns out, is actually part of a spirit-world spa resort run by a sorceress. Given a new name and forced to work as a maid, pampered Chihiro must find her place in a strange, frightening environment if she's going to figure out a way to rescue her parents and return to her own world.
For all the grotesque creatures and visual inventiveness, Spirited Away is about Chihiro's emotional maturation: She starts out a sulky brat and becomes a resourceful young woman who realizes she isn't the center of the universe, and that real friendship is precious and worth sacrificing for.
Miyazaki is never preachy – Chihiro's growth seems completely organic. And she's a remarkably subtle character: Cute, selfish, clever, irritating, loyal, capricious and capable of more than she herself ever imagined – not like an adult's idealized image of a child, but like a real little girl.
Send your movie questions to FlickChick.
See Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this week's new flicks on the multiple award-winning Movie Talk vodcast.
Things to Consider:
What animated film made the most lasting impression on you?
Was it the movie itself, or also the circumstances under which you saw it?
Are there any classic animated films that you loved as a child, but which disappointed you when you resaw them as an adult?
Any that surprised you by being better than you remembered?
Previously in DVD Tuesday:
2008:
Idiocracy
Kill Bill
Detour
Diary of the Dead
Videodrome
The Kingdom
M
Touch of Evil
Bonnie and Clyde
Atonement
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Rififi
Michael Clayton
Network
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Shoot 'Em Up
Freeway
A Mighty Wind
2007:
It's a Wonderful Life
Waitress
Laura
Cop
All About Eve
Severance
Sweet Smell of Success
Daughters of Darkness
The Crazies
Blade Runner
Zodiac
Manhunter
A Simple Plan
Taxi Driver
Renaissance
Blowup
Hot Fuzz
300
Ace in the Hole
Eyes Without a Face
Apocalypto
Citizen Kane
La Jetée
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
Bob le Flambeur
Near Dark
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! — Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
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Jul 1, 2008 12:23 PM
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I love Spirited Away to death. One of my favorite things about it is the visuals, it looks and feels just like the fantasy of kid. Miyazaki has perfect pitch for how to play into the fantasy of children. This is even more pronounced, I think, in Howl's Moving Castle. I actually saw that movie with a young cousin of mine (eight or nine years old at the time), and I couldn't follow the story at all. I had no idea what was going on, I just sat there in awe of the visuals, but my cousin was totally following along, every step of the way. Afterwards I asked her about a bunch of plot-points, and she had everything down perfectly. I mean, it was amazing to see how his style of disjointed storytelling perfectly matched with how she was thinking.
As for the animated movie that made the strongest impression on me, there is no doubt in my mind: Grave of the Fireflies. That movie is like a freight-train in your gut. I'd easily say that it is one of the most powerful movie-going experiences I've had in my life. I've certainly never cried as much (and I don't cry at movies very often). Hell, I'm choking up right now, just thinking about it.
The story is about two kids in Japan during the American bombing campaign durign WWII. Early in the movie, their mother falls victim to a bomb and is burned to death (the sight of her scarred body is certainly one of the most horrific pictures in the history of animation), and they have to try and survive by themselves. Seeing these two kids, fighting for their life among widespread famine and death, it's like nothing you've ever seen on film. Some have said that this is one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made, and I agree; Schindler's List and The Pianist has nothing on Grave of the Fireflies. I consider it one of the greatest achievements in cinema of all time, animated or not (I'm not afraid of the hyperbole! I love this movie!)
On a lighter note, I'd also like to mention my favorite American animated movie, Beauty and the Beast. I think this is an underrated gem, and I like it even more than all of Pixar's productions (then again, I haven't seen WALL-E yet). It hits all the traditional Disney qualities perfectly (it's very funny, the visuals are stunning and the songs incredibly catchy), but it also deviously subverts the traditional Disney-movie and turns it on its head.
If you think about it, the traditional Disney story is pretty sexist. It's all about the Brave Prince Charming coming to rescue the beautiful (and apparently inept) princess. The worst offender is Sleeping Beauty. Seriously, the girl is sleeping until the Prince comes and saves her with a kiss? What the hell is that?!?! Cinderalla is almost as bad, with her living in total misery until her future husband comes along wiht a glass slipper, and suddenly her whole life is perfect. Maybe it's just me, but the metaphors here are pretty awful. I mean, can't they make a movie where the prince is the one that needs to be rescued, and where the kick-ass, smart girl is the one to do it?
Turns out they can! There is a character in Beauty and the Beast who fulfills the traditional Prince Charming role, Gaston, but here he's a total caricature. In fact he's the villain. He's strong, good-looking, and every girl loves him. Except Belle, who's not content to be the servant wife of some ridiculous hunter in some tiny town in some province of France (she says as much in the opening song). When her father goes missing, she single-handedly goes after him, and finds him in the castle with the beast, where she trades her life for her father's. Slowly she starts to break down the Beasts armor, and sees the tortured soul behind it (the psychology of the Beast in this movie is fascinating. You can surmise from the dialog and the songs in the movie that he was cursed at the age of ten. Imagine being ten years old, abandonded by your parents, living in a huge castle with no friends, and only servants who are afraid of you. No wonder he's mean to the crazy old lady who shows up at the door.) And slowly, they fall in love, breaking the curse and making him human again.
In this movie, everything that happens to Belle, happens on her own terms. She chooses to reject Gaston, she goes after her father, she is the one that makes the decision to take his place. When the Beast wants to force her to come to dinner with him, she refuses, staying in her own room, and later, she breaks his command by going into the one part of the castle he has forbidden her to go. Later, she saves the Beast's life after he saved her from some wolves (she could've just left him there and gone home). She constantly challenges the Beasts, and stubbornly refuses to bend to anyones will but her own. That's quite different from Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
I could go on, but I fear I've already gone on to long. I just love any chance I get to praise Grave of the Fireflies and Beauty and the Beast, I love those two. Respectively, the most depressing and the most uplifting movie you can imagine. Makes for quite a double-feature.
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Jul 2, 2008 8:23 AM
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I saw WALL-E opening weekend and loved it. I have an extremely soft spot in my heart for Hello, Dolly! and Michael Crawford, so having a reminder of that film in WALL-E really made my day.
However, it was Finding Nemo that captured my heart. I saw Nemo after I had just returned from spending two weeks on the Great Barrier Reef. I had to go see the movie by myself, as the entire time I watched I was comparing the sea-scenes to what I had experienced when I saw it first hand. Soon, though, the merits of the story took over, and I grew to love the film for its characters, its beautiful animation, and its charm. Whenever, I revisit Nemo, I am reminded of the amazing journey that I had when I went to Australia, but I am also reminded of the sweet story of a father trying to find his son.
As a student of biology, I also laughed hysterically when Marvin finally was able to tell the punchline of his joke "with fronds like these, who needs anemones?" The writing of Nemo is something that has stuck with me for a long time, and will continue to stick with me.
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Jul 2, 2008 4:47 PM
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Spirited Away is a great movie, no doubt about that, but it's definitely not Miyazaki's best: Princess Mononoke definitely holds that title.
Nausicaa was great too, but after seeing PM I felt that it was just a practice leading into PM. I think everything that makes Miyaki movies, well, Miyazaki movies are fully realized in PM: beautiful animation, an amazing script, and realistic characters driven by emotions we identify with all-too-clearly. What I think makes PM the best are its conflicts that have parallels today, human expansion vs. the wellbeing of nature being the most important. It doesn't become a preachy movie, showing both sides of the issue. It has finally outgrown the practice of villainizing people and holds true to life that people do "bad" things, but they have reasons (feeding their families, etc) for it.
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Jul 25, 2008 6:28 PM
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