Spirited Away: Curing the illness of modern society with traditional values

Rating: 9/10 (30 May 2007)

Writer/Director Hayao Miyazaki supplies us with an animated adventure full of social commentary on the illnesses of modern society. Miyazaki asserts that the youth of the world must learn and respect traditional values to cure the illnesses.
In this story a young girl, named Chihiro, is moving to the suburbs with her family. Living in the city her entire life, she is very against the move to the country. By chance they come upon the entrance into the Shinto spirit world. Her parents are turned into pigs, which represents modern consumerism, and must find a way to rescue them.
Miyazaki uses symbolism at just about every turn in the film. Chihiro represents the modern youth with no connection to the past. At one point they pass "little houses" that she did not recognize as Shinto shrines. Miyazaki basically sees the current youth as lazy, spoiled, cry-babies without manners. Chihiro even bumps her head in one scene because she did not bow.
Miyazaki symbolizes his modern illnesses with two monsters. The first monster we meet is the Stink Spirit which represents pollution, an illness of modern nature. The second monster is the No-Face spirit which represents the greed of modern society.
Miyazaki does see hope in the future through the young people by having his main character learn to work hard, display courage, and learn strength through tradition. Chihiro pulls out a bunch of modern trash from the Stink Spirit and comes to find that it was actually a polluted River Spirit, curing it's illness. Chihiro also defeats the no-face spirit by refusing the handfuls of gold that it was offering and showing it kindness.
The setting and atmosphere was successful. The anime was beautifully done. The plot flowed well throughout the film. The characters were convincing even though the were dubbed into English. The background music was appropriately added in as well.
This was a very well done film filled with symbolism. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I will say though, if I had not had a college course in southeast Asian literature that specifically discussed 'tradition versus modernity' with a sampling of many different authors and genre, I probably would not have enjoyed this film. Chances are that a lot of the people who did not like this film didn't understand the symbolism involved and had little or no knowledge of Shinto. With that in mind, I do recommend this film to anyone who enjoys anime.