Pass the Popcorn review

Rating: 8/10 (16 April 2013)

Spirited Away is one of the most famous Japanese animes in the Western world. It became the first anime to be nominated for and to win an Oscar in 2003 for Best Animated Feature. The director, Hayao Miyazaki, had considered retiring from directing after finishing Princess Mononoke in 1997, but was fortunately inspired to make this movie after meeting a friend's daughter.
Chihiro (voice: Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents are driving to their new home when they take a wrong turn and end up in front of a tunnel in the middle of a forest. They decide to go in, and on the other side they find a street with lots of closed restaurants - apart from one, which is deserted but filled with food. Chihiro's parents start eating while she wanders around and finds a boy, Haku (voice: Miyu Irino), on a bridge in front of a bathhouse. He tells her to leave, so Chihiro goes back to her parents, and finds that they have turned into pigs. Dark spirits start appearing, and she tries to run back to where she came from, but can't because a great river blocks her way. Haku finds her and urges her to go ask Kamaji (voice: Bunta Sugawara), the boiler man, for a job, or else Yubaba (voice: Mari Natsuki), the witch that rules the bathhouse, will turn her into a pig too. Claiming he has all the help he needs, Kamaji sends Chihiro to Yubaba. Yubaba, reluctantly, decides to keep Chihiro as a worker in the bathhouse (whose guests are gods) and deprives her of her name, so that she can never go back home.
First of all, this cartoon is beautiful. Even if you don't enjoy the story, you'll be captivated by all the colors, the different characters, the landscapes. Everything is kept simple while put in a surreal, dream-like environment. Being a Japanese anime, this is not meant (only) for children: one of the many contemplated themes is how the rapidly growing sex industry in Japan negatively affects young children - we discover that the bathhouse is basically a brothel, and that Yubaba means "hot water old woman", and that a strange creature named No Face wanted to "buy" Chihiro with the gold he was offering her. Another important theme is ecology: the director Miyazaki once participated in the cleansing of a river, from which he removed a bicycle. In the anime, Chihiro helps removing a bicycle and various other objects from a river god. Also, an elaborated subject, very common among Japanese people, is the collapse of their traditional society: the greedy frog that takes gold from No Face is swallowed right after, as a sort of punishment. In order not to perceive this animated movie as an absurd collection of random characters, it should be remembered that it borrows a lot from traditional Japanese folklore, which the Western society is not familiar with.
I've noticed a lot of people don't like the English dubbed version. I have seen only the Japanese version, with subtitles, but I would still suggest you do the same. In my opinion, a dubbed movie is always worse than the original, it lacks "that special something". And in Spirited Away, the voice actors are amazing: the child characters are actually voiced by children, and an actress who voiced Chihiro's mother actually ate while speaking the dialogue in a scene where her character is eating. All of these little details give so much credibility to the anime, you feel as if you were watching a movie with real people. The soundtrack also helps establishing the amazing atmosphere, and the movie often easily switches from being a children's cartoon to an adult story, with many scary moments. I just think it would have been better if the ending had been a little longer and better developed - it seems a little abrupt.
Rating: 8/10 Read more at passpopcorn.wordpress.com