The Richard Wagner of the animation business

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2007)

Hayao Miyazaki has an ambition that is seldom met these days in popular art. He uses every element of his films to bear a meaning that is part of the film's vision of society.
Spirited Away is about the working world. The English translation does castrate him here and there - in the original there's no talk of "a deal" between Haku and Yubaba, which, in effect, changes Yubaba's character from benevolent to malicious and also removes an important lesson that Chihiro has learned - but the entangledness of relations, the almost mystical whole, a world whose true meaning lies in the places that its inhabitants owe it, overwhelms the viewer even so.
A world that might be endangered by those, who subscribe to ideas forgetting about themselves. This single thing, used in the film in a twofold way, as both the beginning and the end of this world, on one end Yubaba and her lock on names and individuality and on the other No-Face and his seduction by something that looks more valuable than it really is, is already reason enough to consider Hayao Miyazaki a t r u e artist.
It makes no sense to rate other great films worse only because there is one Hayao Miyazaki, so I'm not doing that. But what I do, and I can only encourage anybody to do alike, is to look at his films with the same respect that I look at a Picasso or listen to a Wagner opera.