Spirited Away is easy enough to understand

Rating: 10/10 (4 June 2003)

Spirited Away is easy enough to understand -- it's about Love. It's about lots of other things too. Courage, remembering, cherishing what's good, honesty, redemption, the dignity of work, not exploiting your friends, taking only what you need, gratitude, staying true to yourself, the power of words, respect for all things and people, the importance of cleaning up the environment, and what to do after you stomp on a slug. It's one of the most uplifting films ever but there are many other things it is about -- greed, illusion, reality, gluttony, consumerism, shortsightedness, overprotected children, exploited children, pollution and future generations who will be stuck with cleaning up after us, addiction, abandonment, fear, betrayal, the Japanese recession, crassness, vulgarity, homelessness, exile, lost souls, materialism, rejection, trying to belong, persecution, joblessness, mean bosses, enslavement, and people who lose touch with the richness of their culture to the point where they mistake sacred ground for a theme park. It is also about evil. Evil is ordinary people fawning on a rich man to their detriment and his. Evil is ordinary people destroying rivers. Evil is children cowering from shadows in the sky. Evil is people having to "sign their names away" for the sake of loved ones. No super-villains plotting to destroy the world, just ordinary, routine evil. Evil is not defeated with a karate chop. The heroine conquers all and she does not use karate. She merely sees good or potential good in everybody, even the witch. Chihiro is not particularly beautiful or clever or graceful. She has little talent, and she is not a princess or a sorceress. She is not even unusually brave. She is brave only because she has to be. She's not especially resourceful or quick-witted. Her judgment calls and decisions are not flawless. She is forced to make dreadful choices but everything turns out well just because she has a good heart just like things occasionally do in real life. She's loyal and honest to enemies and friends, she refuses to be swayed by greed or fear. She tries her best to please others and fit in but she never goes against her conscience. The main thing she has going for her is an ability to love courageously and without calculation. Her friends save her from despair; and she frees herself, and redeems her friends and finally her parents with Love. Yes, there are lots of puzzles. What does No-face represent? How does Chihiro pass her final test? Why do certain personalities seem to change so abruptly? Puzzling over those questions is part of the fun. Spirited Away is not a sterile video game where victory comes with quick thinking and quick triggers. Chihiro endures shocks that would stun many adults and almost collapses from it all until Haku gives her renewed hope and courage. When she boards the train for that famous ride she sits silently, looking out the window at achingly beautiful scenery. She has a lot on her mind. Just for starters there is a dangerous witch behind her, a dangerous witch ahead of her, she may have to choose between saving her parents or her dying boyfriend and may lose them all, and on top of that she has taken responsibility for three child-monsters. Yet she gazes out the window with great stillness -- living in the moment. There is nothing superhuman about her yet, at least for those few moments, she gazes at eternity with enviable courage. In spite of all the Japanese weirdness and psychedelic imagery Spirited Away has a message of love, redemption, cleansing, healing, liberation, and salvation that are should be understandable here just as well as in the Mysterious East. It is not just a good movie but a grand human achievement Beethoven's 9th on celluloid. Spirited Away is about lots and lots more things than I have mentioned so far -- but mostly it's about Love.