A Wonderous Experience

Rating: 10/10 (2 September 2012)

I have seen "Sen to Chichiro no kamikakushi" (Spirited Away in Disney's English translation) once now, and I am planning on seeing it many more times, and I am planning to write a review for every time I see it, so that I can add new things I found, and new emotions I experienced.
It all started for me when I got more interested in Japanese culture by reading Haruki Murakami's book The Wind-Up Bird Chronichle. The next name I stumbled upon googling for Japanese masters of art was his, director Hayao Miyazaki. I started watching his first full movie, "Kaze no tani no Naushika", and became touched by his detailed (the best explanatory word) way of drawing and exploring theme's. I have now followed through all of his 90-minute-+ works, and I think I can say I feel his intentions and humanism in every of his films.
Miyaki makes two kinds of films: the epic, and the emotional. To me, Spirited Away, is his most innocent emotional artwork. It has two perfect, settings (witch Yubaba's commercial bathing house for the ghosts of the country and witch Zeniba's peaceful residence on the country side), both demonstrating an extreme in the human world. It has a pleasant speed of action, accustomed in children films - a speed which already takes motion at the start with a moving car in a motile environment - that continues to entertain until the end. This is both due to the wonderful Alice in Wonderland-like story and the appealing characters, but also to the magical, colorful and (still the best word) detailed drawings and the unstoppable fantasy floating through the screen.
An important mention is that the fact that this film is an animation (anime) film, and that it is a children's story with a child hero, does not take away that it is a film only enjoyable for children. None of Miyazaki's films are. If you are a western man or woman, this film (and I highly recommend "My Neighbour Totoru" or "Tonari no Totoro" too), this film will introduce you to the vagarious Japanese culture aspects of shape-shifting and the rest of the ghastly occupied spiritual worlds. A world in which you are guided by the young heroine Chichiro and her (humanistic) relationship with Haku, through the frames covering the essence of emotions that go from loneliness (Kaonashi / No-Face), to love (expressed in its purest form by Chichiro, to her parents, and to her soul mate); through frames half criticism, half teachings (in the form of The ghost of the River, Okutaresama); but most of all through the frame of Imagination. A frame you will never forget.
10 out of 10