[spoiler free]

I watched Spirited Away for the first time a few months ago. For many, the film is something they have grown up with, or have a faint recollection of watching. Maybe you remember it as that film with the strange bathhouse or the one with No Face. What was fascinating to me was that even though I knew for a fact I had never seen the film before, watching it felt like going back home. It was more than nostalgia, and it definitely wasn’t because of familiarity because I have never seen a single film like Spirited Away.

I won’t sit here and ramble about the true meaning of the film because I am not entirely sure myself. What I do know is that the film is a complete immersion. It also is not trying to be extremely profound. It was and still is a film for kids, and Hayao Miyazaki seemed very focused on that. He wrote the film knowing that some things only kids would understand. Like why Chihiro has to hold her breath on the bridge. There are so many little idiosyncrasies that we all have had as kids that somehow disappear as we get older. Miyazaki is able to immerse our minds in what is long lost and forgotten from our childhoods. A specific reason the film stood out to me so much, was the extremely strange and unique characters. Each character brought something new and fresh to the screen whether it’s the elusive No Face or the tyrannous Yubaba. It was the first time in any animated film that I was that invested in so many characters at once as opposed to only caring about the protagonist.

When a film is able to teach you something and make your mind work while watching it, without you realizing how the film is making you do so, it makes for great story-telling and in a way, rhetoric too. This is a slightly altered version of something Andrew Stanton said in a speech once, and something I highly resound with. There wasn’t a point in the film where anything felt too obvious. It wasn’t trying to tell me what to feel what to think. The story would just unfold and it lets the audience feel what they want to feel and interpret it any way they like. There is no ultimate explanation given for the crazy worlds and people and creatures we see in the film, but we take away important messages anyway.

It shows us fear, love, growth, perseverance, and loss from a child’s eyes, but with enough density that an adult can feel it too. It is supposed to be separate from what you see in the real world but at the same time every beat, every emotion, feels reflective of something in our own lives.

I still struggle to find words for what makes Spirited Away such a masterpiece. The setting of the story is absolutely breathtaking, each frame displaying artistic mastery. I still feel like crying when I hear the first few notes of the main theme on the piano. The characters are intensely original. I highly recommend anyone reading this to watch the film if you haven’t (which is a bit unlikely), because I don’t think anyone can regret it.