“Spirited Away” (2001)

Spirited Away

Grade: A+

When done right, no cinematic medium is better suited for the fantasy genre than animation. The problem is that it’s not always done right — you need the right detail, artfulness, craftsmanship, singularity, imagination; the right balance between childhood and maturity. In short, you need Hayao Miyazaki. The Japanese director’s 2001 masterpiece, Spirited Away, sets the medium’s high watermark: the most vivid paintings, the most tender music, the most heartfelt emotions. Despite taking place in a supernatural realm with witches and dragons and soot sprites — despite being nothing more than drawings — the film feels more real than reality.

The story, about a young girl becoming lost and finding herself again (not unlike Kiki’s Delivery Service, another Miyazaki classic), is easy to fall in love with. Every character is treated with tenderness, every stop on the journey offering a valuable life lesson, Miyazaki making no distinction between young and old, east and west, mystical and material. And when it’s all over, after all the beauty and terror and awe and sadness and triumph and complexity that Spirited Away contains is gone, the poignant bittersweet ending is like waking up from a dream. That’s how you know the fantasy is truly great: when sadness enters upon leaving.

*NOTE: Although the English dubbed version is great, I recommend — as with all Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli movies — watching the original Japanese audio version, which is truer to the artistic vision and lacks the tacked-on American sentimentalism, particularly in the final scene.

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More by Hayao Miyazaki

• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) A
• Spirited Away (2001) A+
• Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) B+

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