A 2001 animated movie, based on a fantastical adventure, Spirited Away is a manifestation of fear and anxieties bound along with the themes of loss of identity, greed, and isolation. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, it is based on Japanese folklore, all the while, shattering the preconceived notion of the country in a way that could resonate with the rest of the world with the major issues it speaks about throughout the film, especially focusing on the dilemmas faced by people within themselves. Written and directed by Miyazaki, the film follows a young girl, Chihiro on her journey to get her parents back to the real world where they come from while helping others through her way. She is a kind, compassionate girl who is unblemished by the darkness in the world, untouched by greed and resentment. It is also a story with the message of residence of good and evil together in the world, like the ones instrumental in saving Chihiro and helping her return to her world with her parents often blur the lines between the good and evil, both qualities within them.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Producer: Toshio Suzuki
Cast: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono, Bunta Sugawara (Japanese Cast)
Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, Lauren Holly, Michael Chiklis, John Ratzenberger (English Cast)
Release Date: July 20, 2001 (Japan)
Budget: 395.8 million USD
Watch the trailer here: Spirited Away – Official Trailer
The film opens with a beautiful visual from the backseat of a moving car, a sulking young girl and a couple, as they drive down the road to their new house. While the parents are extremely happy about it, excited even, for a new life in a new neighborhood, Chihiro, their young daughter, is sulking about leaving behind her friends and school, choosing to hold the flowers from her friend close, as if to feel her warmth through them. Chihiro is any young teen today, full of anxiety or fear of leaving people behind, not having them in her life anymore. She depicts these emotions in a subtle but raw manner, at times, even being more careful than her parents, who seem a little weird in the movie.
The father chooses to drive recklessly, despite the disapproval from the family, and they choose to walk down an unknown, scary-looking aloof tunnel, while Chihiro tries to get them back, assuming the role of the parent here. The tunnel they walk through leads them to a beautiful lush green meadow and are soon drawn into a restaurant where there is no one at the shop, so they immediately begin eating it. Chihiro’s parents depict the population after the recession in the early eighties in Japan and the greed that overtook people. Miyazaki in his reply to a fan regarding the question explained how the parents turning into pigs symbolizes greed in people and how it consumes people from within.
While wandering around the town on her own, she runs into a boy named Haku, who asks her to get across the river before sunset and get out of the town in a worried voice while he distracts ‘them’. This startles Chihiro who runs through the aesthetic backdrop and visuals in the animated movie, looking even prettier in the dark. She hurries over to where she left her parents but upon finding pigs in their places, she tries to instead leave on her own. She is yet again startled by the overflowing river and the ghosts she thinks she is dreaming about. Scared and lost, she sits down at some unknown corner of the town, hidden from everyone else, when she is yet again approached by Haku, who had been frantically looking for her. He calms her down and helps her settle down asking her to look for a job with the boilerman, Kamaji, at all costs if she wanted to live. Chihiro does as asked but is met with refusal even after telling him Haku sent her to him. Instead, he asks his helper Lin to send her to Yubaba, the witch who overlooked the bathhouse. She relents even as the witch tries to scare her away, finally wins and signs the contract where her name is then stolen by the witch and she is given a new name, “Sen”.
As Haku, Yubaba’s apprentice escorts her down to the bathhouse to introduce her to other people, we learn no one else is nice to her except Lin and Kamaji, which reminds her of her home and makes her extremely sad. Haku takes her to visit the pigpen and even shares his food with her, reminding her to hold her real name close to her heart if she wanted to return home. Yubaba’s magic makes people forget their names once they enter the spirit world, due to which they can never return home. This concern strangely comforts her after a terrifying fold of events, she can not help but tear up and cry.
While going back to her workplace, she looks up in the sky to see a pristine white dragon in the sky and strangely calls him ‘Haku’, recognizing him even though he’s flowing several miles away from her. Looking graceful as ever, she looks up in fascination at his metamorphosis and can not just walk away. Then, Sen, a child who had never once worked in her life, is bratty and too childish for her age and starts working to get her parents out of the pigpen before they are slaughtered. Even though she fails royally at her job, she still tries her best to help around and earn her place there, even when tasked with the most difficult jobs. In the process, she is tasked to help clean her first customer, the stink spirit. However, due to her kindness and resilience, she helps get a hoard of junk out of it and discovers it to be the spirit of a polluted river. The river spirit leaves a lot of junk along with gold behind for the bathhouse, however, presents a magical dumpling, that can heal anyone, to Sen. Her first task is thus, proven to be successful and she is then welcomed openheartedly into the house, as even the witch goes on to hug her and congratulate her about it. At night, as she sits down with lin to eat breakfast before going to sleep, she asks about Haku and what he does. She is also curious about the train that looks like running on the river and upon being prompted, Lin says she plans to get out of there and go to the town the train takes them to. Meanwhile, a No-Face spirit, that entered the premises without supervision lured the workers toward him using gold and eating them to satiate his hunger. A black humanoid with a white mask on, he absorbs the emotions of beings since he does not possess any, no face, or feelings and emotions.
The next morning, Sen dreams of an incident with her parents who turned into pigs and is startled awake. She goes out on the balcony to discover the river turn into a huge ocean after the rain last night where she has filled with doubts again before she sees Haku in his dragon form, quarreling off bird manikins made from paper and badly injured. She tries to save him from the attacks and discovers him to be badly injured and losing blood all over the floor. Scared for him, not from his metamorphosis, she follows him to Yubaba’s chamber to save him by tending to his bleeding wounds. She, in this attempt, lures Yubaba’s sister, Zeniba, who turns her baby into a mouse and her harpy into a tiny bird, and asks for her to hand over the dragon to her since he stole something precious from her. This instance is another example of how both good and bad resided in a being at the same time, one emerging while the other stayed down. Haku, when he wakes up, destroys the bird manikin Zeniba followed them in but saves Sen and two others from spirits before crashing into Kamaji.
Overcome by compassion and kindness, she then decides to share the magical dumpling the river spirit gave to her, to make him feel better instantly. He soon retches out the gold seal belonging to Zeniba and kills an evil black slug. Kamaji, even though an aloof kind of soul, promptly helps Sen when she expresses her wish to meet Zeniba to return the seal to her and get a remedy for Haku’s illness too. He gives her the tickets he saved up for forty years without any qualms. This generosity is seen within the film too many times to keep track of but touches the heart of the viewers nonetheless, taking them to a fantasy land where a world like this could genuinely exist.
On her way out, she meets the No-face spirit who has wreaked havoc in the bathhouse and gives him the other half of her magical dumpling gifted to her by the river spirit. He then proceeds to follow her to the train and then to Zeniba’s place, to which Sen does not object and happily offers him a ticket. On the other hand, having incurred a huge loss, Yubaba is very angry and wishes to execute the pigs that are her parents. Haku intervenes and points out that her Boh, the baby, is missing and offers to get him back if she frees Sen and her parents, only with a promise that Sen will have to pass one last text given by Yubaba.
Sen, after traveling through six long stations, finally gets to Zeniba’s house who greets her like an old friend and reveals that Sen’s love and devotion for Haku broke her curse and insist that there is nothing she could do to remind Haku of his name. During the course of the night, the folks grow closer to each other, spinning yarns as they talk. Zeniba gives Sen a rubber band to tie her hair up, the band laced with magic to protect her from the evils. Haku then turns up at the door, alive and looking healthy as ever, seeming to have recovered from his wounds. Sen hugs Zeniba and tells her real name, to which Zeniba asks her to hold it close to her since it was hers. Together, they all fly in the sky to return back home.
On the way back, Sen is reminded of the time she falls into the Kohaku river and how he strangely reminded her of an incident from her childhood, correctly guessing his real name to be Nigihayami Kohakunushi, the spirit of the Kohaku River that was dried up to make space for apartments and buildings. They rejoice on their way home, Sen even completes the last test successfully and she gets back her name, Chihiro. On the way back, Haku promises to meet her soon as he escorts Chihiro and her parents across the dry riverbed, asking her to not look back, not until she was out of the tunnel, lest she is yet again entranced by it. She returns back to her own world, and probably forgets about the incidents, if the look on her face is analyzed, However, Zeniba’s band still stays with her and shines as she exits the scene, symbolizing that she is still protected by magic even in this world.
The movie runs heavy on themes such as anxiety, fear, fantasy, magical realism, environmentalism, etc but also subtly hints at displacement and the trauma caused by it. Haku, the spirit of a dried river, does not have any place to call his home in the world anymore and thus, falls under the enchantment of an evil witch. His memory of the past being erased helps him ease off some pain but he still longs to go back to the place he really belongs to. Similarly, the types of love are also talked about in the movie. Rather than romantic love, the love Chihiro and Haku share are higher and purer than that, love and compassion for the beings. Chihiro is never the clichéd “nice girl” in the movie, instead, she is the girl who proves her resilience and perseverance to help Haku and her parents and go back home to the real world. Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was critically acclaimed worldwide for its excellent portrayal of the themes and is still a fan favourite. Made with a budget of a mere 19 million USD, the film has made a little over 390 million USD to date worldwide, theatrically released in some parts of the world as latest as 2019. It has also won nearly every award it was nominated for, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003.
