Watching Spirited Away feels like reliving a lost memory.
100/100
Original Release: 2001
Directed By: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki
Favourite Quote:
“Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can’t remember it.”
Favourite Shot:
Earlier this year, for three months, I worked in a hotel on a small island called Okinawa at the bottom of Japan.
When I was there, for some reason, I felt as if my concept of time was distorted. Past and future didn’t seem to matter anymore. And weirdly I felt as if my life had always been working in this hotel on this island.
"It is a film like no other and one that I believe can change your life. "
And now, when I think back on it, it acts as a sort of weird gap in my memory. Like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit properly. And this is how I also think about Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Because, even though it doesn’t make sense, the film feels like a real thing which happened to me a long time ago that I’ve forgotten.
In Spirited Away we follow a young girl, Chihiro, (Rumi Hiiragi) who has found herself lost in a world of spirits. After some panicking and help, she gets a job at a bathhouse and begins to live and work in this spirit world.
And the concept of time in the film is never spelt out for us. We are unsure whether she spends days in this world, or months, or years. But it doesn’t matter. It’s like a dream. Like when we find ourselves in a place and don’t question how we got there or what is happening next.
And it makes the experience of watching Spirited Away very exhilarating because in each scene you are only worried about what is happening in that moment.
This strange concept of time also reminds us of being a child. When we are children we don’t have a very nuanced understanding of time and this means we are more able to live in the moment and forget about what came before and what comes next.
I remember when I was a child that I would fight with someone one day and be very angry about it and then come to school the next day having forgotten the whole thing. You don’t have to think, you just let the movie in.
In one scene Chihiro goes into the boiler room and there is a spirit with many arms controlling all the baths in the bathhouse with the help of some dust sprites. He tells her she must ask for a job and not take no for an answer.
Any other movie might have you questioning this logic, but the film is so dreamy and in the present that it makes complete sense and you can’t even express why.
In another scene a stink spirit floats into the bathhouse and Chihiro pulls a thorn out of it releasing all the dirt, and junk that had been locked inside of it and the scene ends with a truly satisfying “ahhh” sound.
And in another, Chihiro, No-Face and two small creatures travel on a train which skims along the water, and they pass billboards and lights and there are blurry spirits sharing it with them and the music is melancholic and for some reason it makes you want to cry.
And the whole film is full of these sequences which seem strange and random, but when you watch the film they all flow together perfectly like thoughts in a brain.
And something about these familiar yet completely unfamiliar scenes inspire a sense of nostalgia inside you. But a nostalgia for what? It’s not possible you were once lost in a Japanese spirit world and had to work in a bathhouse. But in some sense you feel as if you most certainly have.
Spirited Away is a special type of film. It is one that you love and you can’t even seem to verbalise why. And when you do try and verbalise it - it sounds silly or makes no sense (like this review). Which is beautiful because Spirited Away, itself, sometimes makes no logical sense - yet still it seems to make complete sense in a way.
It is a film like no other and one that I believe can change your life.
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