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Review: Spirited Away 212

Posted by michael from the there's-plenty-of-soot-around-here dept.
Spirited Away, or Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, is a made-for-Japan animated film that has now made it across the Pacific. Famed director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are well-known for producing exceptional films, and this one is outstanding. It made some vast amount of money in Japan, and U.S. critics are raving about it, but it probably isn't showing in your neighborhood: it's opening in ten large cities this week, a few more next week, and perhaps still more the week after that. There's a proprietary-format trailer available.

Let's get a few things out of the way first. There's both a subtitled version with Japanese audio, and an English-dubbed version. The dubbed version appears to be showing in more theaters, with the subtitled version only showing in a very few locations. I saw the subtitled one, not because I'm a purist (I usually prefer the dubbed versions so my eyes can concentrate on the animation rather than having to read), but just because it was showing at a convenient time, so I can't comment on the quality of the English dub.

The film might be too intense for very young viewers in a few places. One theater nearby has a note saying they won't allow kids under six to attend - I have no idea how they came up with that age, but there's definitely a few scenes that could be frightening to very young kids. You might want to watch it ahead of time, or at least be prepared to hold them tight.

And on to the film. It is excellent. Several of Miyazaki's other films have had themes involving the spirits of nature, and this is a continuation of those. Other tales it made me think of: Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Narnia in general), The Neverending Story, and the tale of Circe the Enchantress in the Odyssey. You remember Circe, don't you, the sorceress who turned Odysseus' men into pigs? No doubt if I knew more about Japanese legends I would see lots of places that Miyazaki drew from there as well.

The basic plot is simple: Chihiro's parents stumble into a place they shouldn't be, and get turned into pigs, and she must save them. I'm not going to elaborate on it because I really enjoyed discovering what was going on throughout the movie and I'd rather not spoil it for you. There's a happy ending - this isn't a Grave of the Fireflies - so you don't have to worry about your kids being permanently traumatized.

Everything about the film says that a great deal of effort was put into it. Tiny details are included in every frame of the animation. There's a pretty extensive use of CGI for rendering background man-made objects (nature backgrounds are mostly drawn), but it fits in very well with the hand-drawn art and adds rather than detracts from the movie. I don't know how I can really convey the difference between this and a typical Disney animated film... Maybe this: think about how, in the Lion King or a similar movie, there are often large swatches of a similar color taking up large parts of the screen. Oh, here's a lion, and it has three square feet of an absolutely pure tan color (which, incidentally, takes very little effort to draw). An equivalent lion in a Miyazaki film would have a hundred shades of color and streaks and details and highlights and lowlights, and it would have that in every frame that it appeared in. The colors are brighter, the whites are whiter. (Note that apparently the subtitled version I saw is being shown in a digital projection, while the dubbed version is traditional film.)

You don't have to like anime to like this movie - it will be fun for nearly all ages. It's not quite as endearing as Totoro, not quite as mystical as Mononoke (well, maybe it is, at that). But it's definitely as good as either of these. Well worth seeing in the theaters.
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Review: Spirited Away More

Review: Spirited Away

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  • This is great (Score:2, Redundant)

    by DarkHand ( 608301 )
    Its great that we're getting some anime in mainstream US theaters. Now we need some of the DBZ movies. :)

    • Re:Hell no! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now we need some of the DBZ movies.

      A 1-hour constipation grunt fest? Characters taking 1/2 an hour to charge energy while straining their bowels like a madman? I think not! :)

  • I second that review (Score:2, Interesting)

    by darthBear ( 516970 )
    I saw it last week at an anime showing and was very impressed with the movie. Even the non anime people I brought with me to see it were glad that they came.

  • Trailers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Derkec ( 463377 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @02:08PM (#4307510)
    There are other formats of trailers and more sizes to choose from at the main movie site. [go.com] Real and WMA are provided in addition to quicktime. Be warned, the page is flash intensive.

    • Re:Trailers (Score:1)

      by t ( 8386 )
      Not to mention that the apple quicktime format is not the problem. Rather it should say "encoded in a possibly proprietary-format trailer" since there is nothing stopping you from using a source-available encoder to make your quicktime movies.

      So what is the encoder? If it is indeed Sorenson or similar garbage then say so.

      t.

    • Re:Trailers (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Green Light ( 32766 )
      Be warned, the page is flash intensive.
      Indeed, the site tells you that it requires Flash. I just don't want to install Flash on my browser, so I won't see the main site. A pity really...

      It looks to be an interesting movie, anyone know if it will play in Columbus (Ohio, of course 8^)?
      • There are also WMA/RealMedia clips and things in Yahoo.com's movie section; however, I don't have the URL handy and don't know where it is, so you'll have to search for it. (Searching Yahoo, fancy that. :) Or maybe someone else will find it.
    • Of course, Real and WMA are decidedly propriatary as well, though at least there's free Real support on Linux.
      • Never said they weren't. Just pointed out that you have your choice of some formats and sizes, which is better than only being able to use a tiny quicktime format.
        • The large size quicktime one is the only one worth watching. VMA has horrible quality, and realmedia seems more like a slightly bad rand() function than a video stream.

          Once again shows the need for a high quality, free, codec to be spread throughout the world.

          But then again, the DVD will hopefully be out in not too long, I just hope they do put the japanese DTS-ES on it (as the dub on the trailer was enough for me, I simply don't like it).
  • Anybody know when this movie is going to be shown in the UK?

    • Re:UK Release (Score:4, Interesting)

      by schambon ( 416146 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @02:22PM (#4307564) Homepage
      Well, it's been showing in France for a while (under the name of "Le Voyage de Chihiro" -- Chihiro's Journey), so I kind of assumed it had been released more or less throughout Europe. Seems I was wrong.

      Anyway, it's a pretty good film, although I disagree with it being on par with Princess Mononoke; basically, this is a film for kids, while Mononoke isn't. All the adult undertones in Mononoke are gone here. For me, an adult, it made the film a lot less enjoyable; no doubt that a kid would find it a lot less complex and a lot more appealing.

      Just my two eurocents.

  • Dubbed version and animation... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ByronEllis ( 22531 ) on Sunday September 22, 2002 @02:11PM (#4307521) Journal
    So, the dubbed version (which I saw last night) is just fine. They use unique voiceactors for each character and they convey the emotion well enough. Of course, if you speak Japanese.

    Personally, I'm okay with dubbing--but then I also like to pick up the appopriate emotive cues, which is more difficult when people are speaking a language you don't understand. Of course, usually the dubbing is awful so having it in English doesn't do a bit of good. Oddly, I don't think the same thing about live action dubbing, but I think that's just because the loss of sync is WAY more annoying than not picking up tone of voice properly.

    • Well, the dubbed version had to have been better than the subtitled version. They chose to do the subtitling in white, which means several scenes were completely illegible due to white text on a white background.