The Other Twin

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2014)

I have seen very few films this year, and I mean very few. Not even a dozen films in four months. Three little children can do that to you, although I've been reading a lot, too. Since I try to write reviews only on films I've recently seen, and the few films I have seen haven't been up to much, this film was the one I turned to.
I had glowing memories of this. Not only of its magic, both in the story and in the whole ambiance of the thing, but also its remarkable penetration of childhood imagination. Many powerful images remained in my mind, regardless that I hadn't seen the film since perhaps 10 years ago.
Well, this is every bit as good as I remembered, perhaps even better. It's Alice in Wonderland, an animated fantasy version of "Bakumatsu taiyôden" (1957). The apparently deserted spirit town more than reminds of "Yôjinbô" (1961). There's the sense of a growing up story, of letting go of the past, and finding love, and friendship, and how people who consider them insignificant, can do great things and not be rewarded for them. Let's not forget Miyazaki's own "Tonari no Totoro" (1988), either, which, at its core, is largely about the same thing.
I like to see this both as real and a dream, where the dream extends itself to reality because Sen, or Chihiro, carries it over with her much like the little paper-spy sent by Yubaba.
One last thing that captured my imagination. This is, in cinematic terms, an astounding celebration of the possibilities of animated colour, although "Hauru no ugoku shiro" (2004) might go even further. Another delicious aspect is the beauty of the water. It's as if the colours themselves were characters, either humans or spirits giving life to the image, or, in the idiom of the film, giving the images their names and identity. It's the evil twin, the enemy of imagination, that takes them away. What is that enemy of imagination, if not to forget what it was to be a child?