Dorothy , Pinocchio, Alice and finally... Chihiro!

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2017)

"Spirited Away" ventures in the realm of poetic fantasy through the life-changing journey of Chihiro, a ten-year old girl imprisoned in a world of spirits after her parents have been turned into pigs.
This premise suggests a mixture of two universal stories immortalized (but not created) by Disney: "Pinocchio" and "Alice in Wonderland". The parents become pigs after they surrendered to gluttony in an unattended restaurant full of appetizing meals; the father mentions his credit card before swallowing a large spoonful of noodles like a pig, literally. Both adults are punished like the kids in Dream Island who made jackasses of themselves. Chihiro was spared because she felt something was wrong and only wanted (a bit cowardly) to get back to the car.
There's a sort of 'immanent justice' governing this seemingly hostile universe, any action has either a cost or a reward, established by the wizard-like imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. Take the villainous Yubaba, a big-headed 'witch' who's also the tenant of a traditional bathhouse and the one who cursed Chihiro's parents, despite her evil ordeals, she's not as one-dimensional as the Coachman, she's a manager who believes in good work and good manners. She's as capable as complimenting and rewarding as she is in the 'punishing' department. It all comes to a moment halfway through the film, when you see the parent's punishment as a severe yet understandable answer to their lack of humility.
But just because Chihiro didn't yield the temptation doesn't make her immune to the wrath of Yubaba. Chihiro wasn't too enthusiastic about the family moving to another town, she missed her friends and school, she's literally turned to the past, like an overprotected only child who can't get off her zone of comfort. After "Pinocchio", she's also a little Alice who doesn't dream about escapism but quite the opposite, and although she doesn't become a pig, her presence in that world has a reason, Chihiro is a girl who embraces the present and only wishes to have her parents back, but she has a few lessons to learn, not to redeem her parent's fault but to overcome her status-quo complex and the things she take for granted.
Chihiro works as a slave for Yubaba, giving her name in exchange of safety. It's not exactly the name, but from what I gathered, a 'kenji', a sort of syllabus that changes her identity to Sen. Actually, the literal meaning of the Japanese title is the "Disappearance of Sen and Chihiro" as if Chihiro was incarnating the loss of Japanese memory, like her parents did when they forgot about basic courtesy in the name of money or like these human ghosts in that masterful train sequence, probable metaphors of Japanese people alienated by the modern world. By becoming two persons at once, Chihiro embarks on a transitional state, in a quest she knows nothing about, and neither do we, until the end, when the film unveils the message, like "The Wizard of Oz" did with the unforgettable 'there's no place like home'.
Now, at that point of the review, I'll keep this simple and say that "Spirited Away" is also a visually rich experience full of Carrolian elements, such as animal-creatures and food with shape-changing power. It is populated by a vast gallery of characters, humans, toad-looking creatures, a boy named Haku who knows Chihiro's name but suffers from existential amnesia as well, there's also a spider-human hybrid working in the boiler room, helped by minuscule black minions (the closest to comic reliefs in the film). Miyazaki drained his imagination from Japanese folklore but he creates his worlds with an instinct in detail and harmony in the drawings that would make any foreigner feel 'at home'. Some elements will certainly be lost in translation, but it's like Kurosawa's movies, the core is universal.
The clear line that became the trademark of the anime elevates the animation to the level of a noble art, one that creates realities of its own, or worlds that speak to our own perception of reality. And using his poetry and his delicate artistry, Miyazaki reprises the same themes than in "Mononeke" with a few variations: the former was about the battle between men and nature but this time, it's about the inner battle, causing men to disrespect the environment, forget about their identity and embrace life like money-driven robots or faceless ghosts. And it's not much that the film is about this stuff but the way it is. The effect on environment is demonstrated through a wonderful sequence involving the washing of a putrid creature, and the lure of gain is conveyed by the "No Face" character who gets anything he wants in exchange of gold nuggets.
Things get easily out of control, until Chihiro refuses the gold nuggets because she didn't need them. All she wanted was to save her parents. As the movie progresses, you can fell the change going on, she's not the shy little girl who couldn't even climb down stairs, she became strong, mature, confidently walking on a very tight metal pipe, symbolically coming to age after a harrowing journey.
A tale about modernity set in a traditional Japanese setting, "Spirited Away" belongs to that breed movies that embrace weirdness with such majestic confidence we can't feel more deceived when we get back to our flat and boring reality, speaking for myself, after watching two "Miazaki" in a row, I feel instinctively bored just thinking of the 'regular' animated movies.