Spirited Away is a coming of age movie that in some ways mirrors the famed Alice in Wonderland story and is on par for its lack of reason and sensibility. Why it’s a must-see movie is simple, it’s something that kids who are not yet adolescents yet are still well removed from childhood might identify with. Miyazaki wrote this film for 10-year old kids as a way to bridge that gap and show the importance of stepping away from the past just long enough to discover a future that could help bridge the identity that kids understood with the people they were soon to become. It’s a bit confusing really, but so is the movie in many ways. Despite that it’s a film that might interest a lot of people for it’s familiar themes.
Japanese animation seems quite odd to a lot of people in the US most times because it’s themes don’t always seem to rest on the same level as ours and the legendary and mythical figures they use appear to be virtually endless. Also, the portrayal of many characters within the cartoons that are produced in Japan is so over-exaggerated that it’s hard to take them seriously. A lot of them look like creatures you might find in the old B-movies that were so popular decades ago. In the movies however they are quite intense and more than a little important to the overall story.
The film is about a young girl that loses her parents and must give up her name to serve an otherworldly creature. She is warned however that if she forgets her name she cannot leave the spirit world that she has wandered into. Eventually, through much adventure and confusion, the young girl manages to restore her parents, recover her name, and make her way back to the real world.
In some ways this mirrors The Wizard of Oz as well as Alice in Wonderland since there is the aspect of going to a very different place where the rules that one recalls from their own world don’t seem to apply as much, if at all. Then there is the recognition of different aspects of one’s original world that come along eventually as the lead character continues to move further through the story. Finally there is the return to the real world where little if anything has changed, forcing those involved to wonder if it was just a dream or something else that they can’t fully understand.
This type of story is one of the fun ones since it’s an anything-goes type of tale that can include just about anything you want within reason and will take the audience through a twisting rollercoaster of images and crazed scenery. Such stories usually carry a very heavy and heartfelt message if one can understand and decipher it, but will allow that message to drop and then simply go crazy with the tale so as to keep it light and easy to move along when it’s needed.
Spirited Away might be worth watching.
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