They were showing this at one of the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley last month, one of the few locations in the Bay Area where it was on display, and I considered going to see it, but decided to wait. Now, after the Academy Awards, it seems to be just about everywhere. It is at least at the Century 16 cineplex near my home, a place where I could not imagine it being shown if it hadn’t won a (well-deserved) Oscar.

Hopefully, some here will be familiar with Miyazaki Hayao’s anime work. I have Kiki’s Delivery Service on tape and the older My Neighbor Totoro on DVD, and one of these days I expect to pick up Princess Mononoke as well — and I earnestly regret that, after advertising the film for early release, Disney somehow dropped the ball on Castle in the Sky. ⁽¹⁾ Spirited Away (I don’t know what the Japanese title Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi means, but would guess at “Sen/Chihiro’s Spirit Adventure”) is a worthy addition to the Miyazaki canon.

Chihiro’s parents have bought a new home in suburbia, and are on their way to move in. Chihiro, who seems to be a child who lives more or less by routine, is not happy about being uprooted from school and friends. During the ensuing discussion, Chihiro’s father takes a wrong turn and ends up on a little-used rutted road through a forest, a road that comes to a dead end at the front wall of what appears to be a building with a dark corridor leading into it. The three go into the tunnel and come out on the other side in a strange world inhabited by various spirits (Japanese kami) and those who serve them. Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs (a borrowing from Greek poetry? or does Japan have a similar myth?) and she herself is forced to take on a job as a menial in a giant bathhouse run by the birdlike witch Yubaba (perhaps a borrowing from Russia?), who “steals” her name and rebaptizes her “Sen”, with her only real friend the enigmatic boy Haku. Gradually, she makes friends of the staff, learns to take on responsibility, help various unlikely spirits visiting the bathhouse, not fear change and adventure, and, in the end, rescue her parents from being turned into rashers and get back to the “real” world.

As usual in Miyazaki’s films, while people and buildings are nothing extraordinary, the seascapes and skyscapes are phenomenally drawn; if this were a live action film, it would be the cinematographer who won the Oscar. How many of the tiny background features (the swarm of vicious paper birds, the train running along tracks buried under a shallow sea, Haku’s dragon form, for instance) are part of the shared *** ⁽²⁾ of Japan and how much derive from Miyazaki’s fertile imagination, I have no way of knowing, and perhaps it does not matter.

The movie follows directly in the tradition of the two earlier films that I mentioned, and is the natural next step after them. My Neighbor Totoro showed us our world, as seen by the Japanese, but with occasional irruptions of magic penetrating into it, usually just out of the corner of your eye. Kiki’s Delivery Service took place in a world where magic was an everyday part of life but had not replaced technology (see especially the final credits, in which Kiki on her broom is flying alongside boy-friend Tombo in his handmade airplane). Spirited Away takes us completely out of our world into a parallel world that is all myth and magic.

Definitely worth seeing — and adding to my library when it comes out.

⁽²⁾ For the life of me, I don’t know an English word or even expression for the Esperanto “idearo”, which is the only thing that comes to mind here.

How could this not be among your 2003 best? It is engaging and unexpected.