Spirited Away is the crowning jewel in Japanese animation legend's career

Rating: 10/10 (3 January 2002)

JAPANESE anime, with its stylish combination of post-apocalyptic visions, babes, violence and gore, has broken from cult status to mainstream outside of Japan in recent years.
But viewers expecting the usual dose of babes and bombs will get a surprise in Spirited Away. This animated movie, the highest-grossing in Japanese film history, is written and directed by the best-kept secret of Japanese animation - the legendary Hayao Miyazaki.
His unique blend of restrained pastoral scenes, lushly rendered in traditional hand-drawn animation style, and stories flavoured with a strong social conscience, presents a more lyrical side of Japanese animation.
Four years in the making, Spirited Away is destined for classic status.
The heroine of the story is 10-year-old Chihiro. When the movie opens, she is sulking in the back of her family car as they are on their way to a new home. Things take a strange turn, however, when her father drives into an overgrown lane that takes the family to what seems to be a deserted theme park.
Chihiro's parents help themselves to some food, and are turned into pigs. And she finds herself trapped in an alternate world ruled by the evil sorceress Yubaba.
Forced to be independent, Chihiro survives by working in Yubaba's exotic bath house, patronised by Japanese gods. She is aided in her quest to cure her parents by Haku, a human boy who is Yubaba's magical apprentice.
The story follows the usual template of children's stories where a young protagonist learns resourcefulness in a crisis and matures into a better person.
Chihiro's plight is familiar to those who have read Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard Of Oz. The sorceress Yubaba bears a distinct resemblance to the Russian folk witch Baba Yaga.
But told in true Miyazaki style, Spirited Away unfolds like a magical carpet ride through the man's generous imagination.
The first lure is, quite simply, tactile. Miyazaki's hand-drawn style is lusciously detailed, providing a dizzying treat for the eyes.
The theme park boasts authentic architecture from various periods of Japanese history. The bath house brims with gorgeous interiors. And the lovingly-created, entirely charming gods and monsters who totter around this magical world put Pokemon's assembly-line crude scratchings to shame.
But above and beyond the visual splendour, Miyazaki is a storyteller non-pareil.
Chihiro's emotional journey is told with sensitivity and her character develops with an authentic ring of heartfelt truthfulness that would be admirable in a live action movie, and doubly amazing an accomplishment in an animated movie.
Miyazaki is often compared to Walt Disney by a Western press looking for a convenient soundbite introduction.
Although there are truly hilarious comedic bits in this movie as well as sidekicks aplenty, there is nary a singing teapot in shouting distance. The only music is a poetic folk song - just a voice with a samisen accompaniment worth sitting through the end credits for.
What has earned Miyazaki a loyal adult following is also the fact that his movies are thinly-disguised allegories. His last movie, Princess Mononoke, was a fable with an ecological message.
Spirited Away comments on everything from a forgotten Japan - the old world filled with gods, manners and more gracious customs - to the new materialism - represented by the No Face monster, plagued by insecurity and loneliness, who buys friendship with gold.
But these metaphors are handled with subtle delicacy, so that they can either be ignored at no expense to the story, or read for enrichment to the tale's already strong emotional core.
Miyazaki's movies are anchored in Japanese animist beliefs, flavoured by the culture and history of the country and steeped in its minimalist aesthetic.

This last aspect has perhaps denied Miyazaki the mass appeal he so richly deserves. In a world brought up on the frenetic pacing and exploding shades of a Technicolored, Dolby-surround sound musical Disney world, Miyazaki's muted lyricism and gentle pacing takes getting used to.
But allow yourself to be spirited away, and there are great rewards in store. You will not regret this trip.