Spirited Away (2001)

Hand-drawn and produced by Studio Ghibli

Music by Joe Hisaishi

*SPOILER FREE

"I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. t's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish." ~ Hayao Miyazaki

Of all the films I have seen in my life, this might be the hardest for me to talk about. Not because of its complexity or sophistication, but because of its exuberance and profound brilliance. This is the Japanese phenomenon 'Spirited Away' by the Japanese phenomenal Hayao Miyazaki.

Spirited Away is a Japanese anime following ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents on their drive to their new home in a new neighborhood, as her father decides to take a shortcut, they run into a dead end in front of a tunnel leading to a realm of mysticism and mystery. After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba who runs an onsen (Japanese bathhouse) for gods and spirits, Chihiro sets out on adventure of freeing herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Approaching themes like supernaturalism, consumerism, and capitalism. Highlighting on the society's obsession with work, and the toxic class hierarchy where the working-class is dehumanized in favor of the upper-class, the curse of the rat-race, embracing materialism and abandoning spirituality... this Japanese cultural event is a melancholic poem of realism.

Its enchanting beauty and exhilarating frame-by-frame drawing, mythological allegory and folklore metaphors in every sequence, and the moments of Ma ま (pause in time and emptiness in space in Japanese) make me burst into tears and fill my heart with blissfulness and nostalgia every time I dwell on it.

As breathtaking and soul-stirring as in sight, the film score was composed and conducted by the legendary Joe Hisaishi, and performed by the New Japan Philharmonic. The sound design and songs never let go of you from the very beginning, during, and as the end credits are rolling. Long after the film was released, Hisaishi added lyrics to "One Summer's Day" (the film's most compelling composition) and named the new version of the song "The Name of Life" (いのちの名前, "Inochi no Namae"), a must-hear after watching the film.

With gratitude for those who showed enormous appreciation for this art form and all due respect to their work of making this accessible for more people. Please do experience this in its original spoken language.

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Available to watch on Netflix, HBO Max, and on Amazon Prime Video

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