Simply Magical

Rating: 10/10 (15 January 2016)

I could start this off with a fun fact, but I have something better: a story. The first time I watched this movie was in a Gifted and Talented class in school. My teacher, Mr. Gagnon, was a cool guy with great taste in film, so he showed us this film at the end of the year. I had never seen a film like this before, and I was put off. It weirded me out and made me wonder why everyone thought it was so great.
If I could, and it wouldn't throw a wrench into the time-space continuum, I would go back and time and strangle younger me.
Every time I watch this now, I am blown away by how magical it is. Some people call this the greatest animated movie of all time, and I do not particularly disagree. In any way films can be measured, this is spectacular. It almost seems too good to be real, like it's the kind of movie that only exists in your dreams.
2001 was a horrible year for the world thanks to the 9/11 attacks. But it was a great year for art, particularly non-American art. The Harry Potter film franchise kicked off in a big way. So did the LoTR franchise, which I will be getting to as we edge closer to my all-time favorite films. Amelie came out in France. And Japan got both this masterpiece and my favorite video game of all time, Final Fantasy X.
Our protagonist is Chihiro, a young girl moving to a new home. On their way there, her family takes a detour through some woods and ends up in a rundown amusement park. Upon seeing plates upon plates of unguarded food, her parents make the absolute worst decision a character can make in a film like this and eat it. As a result, they turn into pigs, for that food was meant for the spirits. Left alone, Chihiro is forced to navigate this treacherous world and look for them.
Character development is important in all tales, but particularly these kinds. And this movie has bucketloads of it. If you want to turn off the movie in the first ten minutes because you don't like Chihiro: don't. She experiences more and better done character growth than almost any character I've ever seen. It's not constantly pointed out (thankfully), but you can't miss it.
There are movies that you know from the first five minutes that you're gonna hate. There are movies that disappoint you. There are movies that you grow to like as they play on. And then there are movies that you know from the first five seconds are going to be amazing (if you're not a kid with no taste in film like I was). This film falls firmly into that fourth category.
One Summer's Day is quite possibly the most beautiful piece Joe Hisaishi has ever composed, and that is saying something. It is our guide through this film, popping up when it is most needed. I always welcome it, but it has by far the most impact right at the start of the film. If you have any doubt that you're in for a magical adventure, it should disappear instantaneously.
All the characters in this are three-dimensional and unique and interesting. You're invested in these people and creatures. You want to see what happens to them. This is sort of strange because they're all based on standard character types, and they don't throw in crazy twists or turns, but the way they carefully develop each and every character makes them fascinating.
I am imagine many parents threw this film to entertain their kid while they did their work, told their kid they'd watched the first five minutes, and ended up watching all of it. It's that kind of movie.
This doesn't need to be said considering it is a Miyazaki film, but the art is amazing. There is one sequence in particular, where Chihiro is following a boy named Haru through a field of flowers, that blows my mind away. Even the first time I watched this, I had to admit that scene was incredible. By the early two-thousands, Miyazaki had begun to incorporate a lot of 3-D animation into these 2-D animated movies, and it shows. The lines are crisper, the colors are deeper, and the awe is deeper. And even if you prefer the old, completely 2-D Miyazaki films like Lapita, you can't don't that the flower sequence would not have been possible without it.
Mr. Miyazaki planned to retire after making Princess Mononoke, his magnum opus. I'm glad he didn't. If he had stopped creating art, we would not have gotten Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, the phenomenal The Wind Rises, or this masterwork. And most of the old Miyazaki movies would have never gotten released in the States.
After this movie pulled off a surprising Best Animated Feature win at the Oscars (the first time a non-American animated movie had ever been awarded with that), a new interest in Miyazaki's work rose in the West, enabling Lasseter and Co. to bring the movies over and get them all good-to-great English dubs.
Great movies draw me into their worlds. This movie keeps me in its.