Almost all of my energy has been taken up by Spirited Away, I have seen it so many times that every time there are things that I missed in previous viewings. How did I, for example, not notice today how Haku leaves his shoes and steps into the next room, which is the bathhouse of the spirits while one of Yubaba’s maids picks it up for him? Yes, the bathhouse of the old witch, Yubaba, is a den of avarice and depravity, but, I am very polite and very civil — as our protagonist Chihiro learns, During her visit to the land of spirits, there are also customs and rules.
There is no other movie by Hayao Miyazaki that draws me and follows me like Spirited Away. One of those factors is the picture of totally sealed, unpredictable, order with cycles and activities, which are more or less normal and shocking precisely because there is no dot alien to the people living in that world.
Chihiro falls in darkness during the first act and that is where it all starts stranding Chihiro into the spirit world and cutting off her from her parents up to the last last scene.
Chihiro’s family appears to have taken a wrong turn somewhere – what seems to have enchanted her family takes them sequentially in what her father believes to be an ‘abandoned’ theme park, where they even find on a forlorn street of empty restaurants, giant plates of food – and out of nowhere on the bridge right before the bath house there is Haku, looking concerned about Chihiro. If he appears concerned, plenty of people will be concerned, no matter what it is concerning let alone why it should concern them.
In an instance, the day goes into night for the sun sets and the shadows grow, it seems too rapid, and at the time when paper lanterns which had not been illuminated before atop the street, inside a town that had appeared to be buried for ages joyously shines up ‘too late to get out’, and The town that never sleeps, is beginning to wakeup slowly…and the people meant to be asleep are waking up. What happens to Chihiro’s parents in the unmakeable scary transformations which terrifies Chihiro herself has history in classical greece, literature and even in Japanese anime. Then again, at this junction out of the particular story comes a shock unlike any I have come across within any other form or type of creative writing.
A steamer arrive,sached to the bank of the hitherto non tax cols t, The sun shone and all the doors of the cabins swung open at the same time. The first time I saw the film all I saw was Doors. Those doors cannot, in any way, open… I was right.
That, wholly and completely, is why, for example, children’s and animal instincts frustrate a lot and fascinate virtually all about Spirited Away – the possibility of such a sense of one’s being engulfed in a sequence of the utterly unreal events where everything is pregnant with the weighty secret that poised in the perpetual danger of awful or miraculous unrevealing. The first such clouding of the sky occurs most powerfully — in that nightfall sequence — but it happens all the way through the film: – When Chihiro first reaches the Yubaba’s rooms and looking into Chihiro’s palms when she is made to wash that stink spirit, when Chihiro remembers something important about Haku.
It was the first time I watched an entire film by Miyazaki, and as a result, my expectations were blown out of the water. There is a part of me that wants to praise its glorious visions and elaborate production designs. It is one of the most visually splendid animated films I had ever seen – and one that changes in a swing of its emotions and imagery: the sickening glare and dancing shadows and kurtmaga চাপ of the boiler room faced by its arachnid like operator Kamaji; Yubaba’s astonishingly elaborate rooms furnished with giant Satsuma vases, carpets plush and lazily upholstered velvet; the view of spirits train making its way over the sea; and needless to mention, the unbearable crowd of creatures and faces.One thing was the reverse that I became baffled over – owing to my perception – a cold and oppressive realm of chronology in which the characters could oscillate without rhyme or reason from good to bad and back. It is a world, which I believe has not been graced.
I was wrong. There is nothing haphazard or paradoxical about the aspects – the characters have, and whilst Chihiro goes through her wordless escapades you can finally sense half the grace.
However, with patience, politeness, small and big wins, hardship endures to win Chihiro’s support in the end- first a boiler-man Kamaji and later a wary young lady Lin. The max however was achieved during her greatest victory over the stink spirit and this was almost from every one who used the bath house.
It lets Chihiro connect with No Face, the agog foreigner who disturbs the calmness of the town, in whose love she too melts, and therefore begs to ask such people a simple question: why will those who do not possess such qualities of empathy and kindness will have Oedipus consequences.
This antagonism of No-Face is the same as the film’s bigger picture theme about a lost self. Haku is quite forgetful of his original name and his original self and transforms in dramatic and possibly dangerous ways every so often. Chihiro whom Yubaba calls ‘Sen’ is on the verge of losing her identity and has transformed into another individual. (The Japanese View that one person’s name and the two Chihiros should not be regarded as one person anyway) in the movie speaking of chihiro and sen it suggests that there are two totally different persons In fact it is rather In History filled with Dear World again, the complete character of Yubaba is one segregated to two one with violence facing and one benevolent Zeniba (was or is completely goodness and evil).
In this metatheme of educational crisis, there is also an elegy piecing back together the lost Japanese pores – as in, the veins of contemporary Japan that used to be connected to culture, spirituality and even nature. For Miyazaki, just like in case with Chihiro’s family, Japanese culture was no exception to the forces of materialism, laziness, and consumerism.
In one of the most surprising stretches of the Miyazaki’s hyperbolic ecological views, do note that two river deities existed, do note that though no one has ever seen both rivers, one river is regrettably revealed to be highly dirty, and the other is dried up and a housing estate built over it.
While the public bath is not ideal at all, in Spirited Away, a potential is given to Chihiro to explore her connections to her country’s past. She dons her traditional Japanese clothing instead of western one, and goes on a spirits’ communion session. It is a realm where performing the correct ritual gesture or chant, when required, has its practical utility.
As can be noticed in many others’ works, there is also some influence from Shinto elements in Miyazaki such as more folk oriented traditions (floating masks in the opening river scene were modeled from decorated masks that are used in Shinto rituals at the kasuga shrine in naratown), the general details are from his head.
Spirited Away is as much a pagan book as the Odyssey or the Antigone is. Moreover, even if Miyazaki is not an animist, one cannot say for sure that much of Homer and Sophocles works were dedicated to the divinities belonging to the Italic myth. In any case, it has been noted for a long time now that the Christians have been amazed at the works of Homer and Shakespeare, and Miyazaki also have much to offer in terms of what to be awed at.
The inner source of Miyazaki’s imagination here is not so much any particular religion as the wish to re-enchant the world — a wish that extends across all of Miyazaki’s works. It is for the same reason, at least in part, that CS Lewis introduced river-gods, and tree spirits in Narnia. It is obvious Lewis wholly subjugated his pagan gods under the rule of Aslan…but, at least in part, the purpose of this activity for Lewis was to legitimize the imaginative pleasure of river and tree deities, William who was lucky enough to find them and however.
The resolution is vague and open-ended: What if at all does Chihiro benefit from her journeys? Even though the English dubbing tames the effects, it seems that like her parents, Chihiro in the end is unable to remember her stay in the world of spirits (as has been confirmed by Miyazaki himself). Now Chihiro remembers how in the past, Haku was forgotten and then remembered later. Zeniba comforts Chihiro in her plight to remember Haku (and Miyazaki has also suggested that promise Chihiro hasn’t necessarily lost her memories forever) when she states that “Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it”. Obversally but after all, Haku has sworn to Chihiro that they will indeed meet again. Also, the granny and gold ochre leaves were halved inches to elongated necks of Chihiro’s relatives, compromise still for the true lives- as are her last childhood belongings. It may be a good way to put the power of Spirited Away: It looks to be a movie that has tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to tell us what we had known but subsequently forgot.
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