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copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
A
young girl named Chihiro is moving with her parents to a new home in the
suburbs when her father spies what looks like a shortcut through the
forest. With a sharp turn of the steering wheel, Chihiro’s father
guides the family off the paved city roads, and down a narrow, winding,
rocky path through the woods. The dirt path leads them to a mysterious,
seemingly ancient abandoned building. Chihiro’s parents can’t help
but let their curiosity get the better of them; they get out of the car
and begin to poke around, despite Chihiro’s protests that the place
seems creepy. Her parents tease her for being a scaredy-cat, insisting
that the building — which turns out to be made not of old stone, but
new plaster — is probably just a part of a never-completed theme park.
Faced with the choice of remaining alone in the car or tagging along
with her inquisitive parents, Chihiro reluctantly follows her parents
into the building, and down a long dark corridor that does little to
allay her fears. The corridor opens up into a train station; though
it’s empty, they can hear the train chugging along not far away. When
Chihiro and her parents follow the sound and exit a nearby door, they
find a beautiful little abandoned village awaiting them outside.
Chihiro’s parents soon discover a tiny food stall — empty of people,
but offering a counter full of gloriously aromatic and apparently free
food, which both eagerly dig into, ignoring Chihiro’s warnings that it
all looks a bit suspect. Frustrated, Chihiro leaves her parents to gorge
themselves and roams around. But as the sun begins to lower in the sky,
strange things begin to happen. When Chihiro runs back to the food
stall, she finds her parents have turned to pigs. A young boy soon warns
her to run across the bridge before night falls, but unfortunately, the
advice comes too late — which is how Chihiro comes to find herself in
an odd new world, working as a servant in a bathhouse for spirits run by
the witch Yubaba, who offers Chihiro the job in exchange for her name.
And if Chihiro can’t figure out a way to rescue her pig parents soon,
she’ll lose her identity, and remain trapped in the spirit world
forever.
Review
The
best kids’ stories, whether they’re told in movies or in books,
aren’t merely kids’ stories at all — you love them as much when
you see them as an adult as you would as a child, and sometimes, even
more so. They lure you into their marvelous fantasy worlds full of magic
and monsters and talking animals; they pique your sense of adventure,
make you believe in the unbelievable. Only later, when you think about
it, do you realize how much they seem to say about the world we live in;
a story about witches and spirits and other imaginary creatures becomes
an allegory, a metaphor for the real world, a sneaky lesson about life. Spirited
Away is a story that’s fun for the kiddies and a revelation for
adults, simple and sophisticated all at the same time. Unlike
Miyazaki’s equally marvelous technology-against-nature rumination Princess
Mononoke, Spirited Away makes few overt philosophical
statements. Instead, it’s a coming-of-age story disguised as a
dreamlike fantasy adventure, a sort of Alice in Wonderland meets The
Wizard of Oz done anime-style, in which a young, frightened girl
finds herself in a strange new world, and gains inner strength and a
sense of independence as she slowly makes her way back home. It’s a
familiar story that feels completely fresh and new the whole time
you’re watching Chihiro’s journey unfold onscreen: the characters
and places are so odd and unsettling and enigmatic you sometimes feel
you’re walking through a stranger’s dream (or occasionally nightmare
– one of the coolest things about Spirited Away is that it’s
sometimes genuinely dark and moody; this isn’t your usual
American-style Disney jokey cartoon). Everyone gushes about Miyazaki’s
breathtakingly gorgeous animation – his painterly touch, the attention
to detail – but to me, the thing that makes Spirited Away such
an amazing experience is that the story and characters are so
compelling, you don’t think about how it’s being told at all:
you’re just enchanted. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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