dazzling, mysterious, and touching

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2004)

Some movies you just have to see to believe. Spirited Away is one of them. Now I'm something of an anime/manga fan, but my wife is definitely not, and she LOVED this movie. My young son also has become something of a Miyazaki fan, thanks to the DVDs of his movies. (We now give a rousing "Studio Ghibli" cheer at the beginning of this and other Miyazaki films.)
My wife and I saw Spirited Away in a theatre, and unlike some japanimation I've seen, this does belong on a large screen. However, it might be too intense for younger viewers. It translates quite well to DVD, so no complaints there, but the amazing color pallete and generally high artistic quality deserve a vivid presentation.
I've heard and read complaints that some of the themes were too culturally-specific, that it would be impossible for an American unversed in Japanese mythology to understand the film. Well, that suits me just fine; I rather like the sense of strangeness that comes with not quite knowing how all the themes tie together. Perhaps it helped me identify with the main character, Chihiro, who as a young girl used to a technological society certainly isn't in a position to know the details of bathhouses for spirits.
I really enjoyed the notion that if one goes just a little off the beaten track of modern Japan, one finds beautifully anachronistic spirit worlds. Fortunately, we didn't have to go too far afield to find Miyazaki's beautiful flight of fancy. This film succeeds as a morality play on the pitfalls of carelessness and greed, as a comment on the persistence of deep cultural roots despite technological homogenization, and as an inspirational fairy tale of a girl who has to accept her extremely peculiar lot for the sake of her family.
Impressive. 9/10.