Another animated poem.

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2014)

I watched this movie three or four times since 2001, when I was still a little kid. Back then, the only thing I could think of while watching it was: "this is beautiful". Even this evening as a teen girl I am now, the only thing I could think of was the same. Yes, the feelings and the details you are able to notice and remember increase as the years pass. Back then, I didn't pay too much attention to how rich is actually every single frame in this movie: if you stop during any moment inside the bathhouse, you will be able to notice that every single corner on the screen is actually filled with something. I'm talking about an incredible amount of different items that have a terminated location in every room and a whole lot of incredible creatures who (yes, why not?) are always busy doing something. If you think about it for a moment, you realize and understand how different Miyazaki's movies are from any other animated movie from any other studio. What every single character does just looks natural and spontaneous. If they don't say a single word in a scene, they won't just stand in the background, frozen in a static position just because they don't verbally take action. They are part of that world, they live their lives there, eat, walk around, quarrel, screw up, and you get naturally conscious of this fact while watching Spirited Away and any other Ghibli work. When you watch this kind of movie, you walk, cry and get anxious with the characters. You and your feelings and your thoughts participate, and you inevitably get kidnapped by its beauty. I am not writing this to spoil the plot that much. It's about an overage Japanese family who moves to a little town among green hills covered in green. The parents patiently deal with their stubborn 10-year-old daughter who restlessly recalls how she liked the place where they lived before and the friends she left. Then they get lost and find a strange passage among the trees. Obviously, they want to take a look and see what's on the other side, and when they get there an incredible adventure begins. The little lead character, Chihiro, will deal with spirits of every sort that want to take a good and restoring bath at the bathhouse lead by the creepiest, yet somehow amusing-looking witch you've ever seen. Chihiro is quite a though kid and she won't change a bit of her attitude through the whole movie, but this won't stop her from showing us the way she reacts with love, friendship, the unknown. And what's truly beautiful, is how delicately and genuinely all of this happens. You're going to be captured by the incredible sceneries this masterpiece contains, by its gentle and caressing soundtrack, by the bizarre creatures that populate the place and you will learn with simplicity that "Once you've met someone, you never really forget them". It's up to you in what situation you feel like applying this concept, if when trying to remember someone that is gone forever, someone you spoke with waiting at the bus stop. Your first love. Who you really are.