SPIRITED AWAY may be the most famous movie of Miyazaki animation in the world because this one took Academy award, Gold Award at Berlin Film Festival, and a number of awards both in Japan and in the world.
In this sense, Spirited Away is the highest achievement of Miyazaki works. If you know Miyazaki animation works, you might be thinking that his works are for all the family. That’s true. But this film is sometimes hard to understand for kids because this contains Japanese cultural and traditional way of thinking, very unique understanding to life, and a kind of philosophy about moral of people.
Of couse, art works are incredibly beautiful and characters are funny and impressive, so maybe children also can enjoy simply watching the screen. For adults, this story could be a door for the new world of fantasy.
Leading role girl tries to help her parents by her own efforts in this story, which shows how a child should grow in the world and how life is hard, wondrous, or beautiful. This story is also interesting but again a little hard to understand even for Japanese adults if they are not familiar to sense of Japanese mental cultures.
In this point of view, this movie is a highly adult oriented movie with high sense of intelligence. That’s why this work could get many awards of great value.
In Japan, Spirited Away made the box office record in the movie history and it has never been replaced by another. As a reference, the second record is HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE, and the third one is PRINCESS MONONOKE. Miyazaki Movies still have top 3 records of Japanese box record movies.
As a fan of his works, I also like this movie. He was seriously considering about children’s future of Japan when Princess Mononoke was made. He often commented that he was worried about the healthy future of young people because at the time there were many social problems concerned with urban children in Japan. At the time, some lost the social contact ability working too much on games or internet, and some lost hope or ambition to their future because Japan was suffering from serious recession. In Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki gave them a strong message ” LIVE ! “. That was a splendid attitude then, so many praised his work.
I was also pleased to see Spirited Away because I thought Miyazaki came back to his own creative world, or in a healthy condition. He could put the serious message aside in this movie, and I thought he could focus on his original and creative world with beautiful story and wonderful textbook of life in it. I like both types. Miyazaki’s attempt often gives us a good philosophy of life, and dreaming fantasy too.
If Princess Mononoke was categorized in the first type, I would say Spirited Away is a mixture of 1st type and latter type at the rate of 30:70. In Spirited Away, message is covered with soft filter, but it sure is in the movie. And the fantastic world of hope and beautiful humanity are exactly expressed in this art of work.
The first time I saw Spirited Away, I wondered what Mr. Miyazaki wanted to tell in this movie because his movie more or less has a theme or concept in it. My first impression about this movie is that this movie tells about the growth of a girl or a person.
Still the impression prevails in my mind, but later again, when I saw it next time, I thought that Miyazaki tried to describe good old time of Japan through Japanese old tale.
In Japan, there was a firm moral or people’s faith in mind. But now with the change of the society, it’s about to fade away. Some are greedy and some are selfish now. In the old time of Japan, people are always caring of each other. Beautiful moral and custom rested in our mind.
In the movie, the parents turn into animals (pigs) when they break the rule of the society. And the girl remained there needs to struggle with her own efforts and judgement.
Throguh this experience, she grows. This story tells both beautiful aspect of human and evil of human mind. Long time ago, Japanese children needed to work with their family for help. But now it’s not like that, and parents themselves are becoming selfish.
Miyazaki might try to tell the good old virtue of Japan in this movie as a common human heart.
Without hesitation. I can recommend this movie to family, and especially adults who forgot family mind should see this movie. You will find them again and some Japanese flavoured story will give you exotic presentation from different culture.
