| Spirited Away | |
Spirited Away film poster |
|
| Directed by | Hayao Miyazaki |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Toshio Suzuki |
| Written by | Hayao Miyazaki |
| Starring | Japan: Rumi Hiiragi Miyu Irino Mari Natsuki United States: Daveigh Chase Jason Marsden Suzanne Pleshette |
| Music by | Joe Hisaishi |
| Cinematography | Atsushi Okui |
| Editing by | Takeshi Seyama |
| Distributed by | Toho (Japan) Studio Ghibli (Japan) Walt Disney Pictures (USA) United International Pictures (South Africa) Europa Filmes (Brazil) Optimum Releasing (UK) |
| Release date(s) | Japan: July 27, 2001 United States: September 20, 2002 (film) March 28, 2003 (re-release) Canada: November 6, 2002 Australia: December 12, 2002 United Kingdom: September 12, 2003 |
| Running time | 125 min. |
| Country | |
| Language | Japanese |
| Budget | ¥ 1.9 billion (US$ 19 million) |
| Gross revenue | ¥ 30 billion (approx.) (US$ 300 million (approx.)) |
Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi?, lit. Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away) is a 2001 Japanese anime film written and directed by famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film views a sullen ten-year-old girl in the middle of her family's move to the suburbs and an awkward wander into a world of gods, spirits, and monsters; and a bathhouse for these creatures.
The film received many awards, including the second Oscar ever awarded for Best Animated Feature, the first anime film to win an Academy Award, the first (and so far only) non-English speaking animation to win, and the only winner of that award to be traditionally animated or win among five nominees (in every other year there were three nominees). The film also won the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (tied with Bloody Sunday). Spirited Away overtook Titanic in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history.[1]
Contents |
Ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents are moving to a new town, much to Chihiro's regret. While driving, the father decides to take a shortcut down a mysterious pathway with tiny house-like stones that are identified as being where small spirits live. After a short but bumpy drive, the family comes to a stop at what seems to be an abandoned theme park. Curious, the father leads his family through a tunnel and explores the park, finding a deserted town and a stall full of freshly-cooked food. The parents greedily help themselves while Chihiro refuses to eat. As Chihiro's parents are eating, she wanders off and meets a boy named Haku. Haku seems to be familiar with Chihiro and warns her urgently to escape with her parents; she returns to find they have turned into pigs, and that the way back has become inundated into a deep river. Spirits appear and go about celebrating in the park. Haku secretly and carefully takes Chihiro to a large bathhouse to avoid alerting the spirits to the presence of a human. Haku then tells her that she must get a job from the witch Yubaba, the owner of the park's bathhouse, until he can help her recover her parents and escape.
With the help of the six-armed boiler room master Kamajii and a bathhouse servant girl named Lin, Chihiro is able to convince Yubaba to give her a job; in exchange, Chihiro is forced to give up her name so that Yubaba may keep her in service for eternity. Yubaba gives her new servant the name "Sen(千)," which is derived from "Chihiro(千尋)" by removing the second character and using the alternate reading of the first. Chihiro eventually learns that Haku is similarly indebted to Yubaba. Chihiro is put to work alongside Lin, helping to bathe and serve the most difficult spirits in the bathhouse. Chihiro is able to successfully bathe a "stink spirit", it is later revealed to be a river spirit who had been heavily polluted; and who rewards Chihiro for her service with a magic healing cake made from special herbs, as well as with gold. Later, Chihiro discovers Haku's true form, a dragon, as he is attacked by paper birds controlled by Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. Haku had stolen Zeniba's sigil under orders from Yubaba. Chihiro tries to help Haku recover from his injuries using the cake given to her by the river spirit, which acts as an emetic to the dragon, thus recovering Zeniba's sigil and squashing a peculiar black slug that had been attached to it; however, Haku remains comatose, so Chihiro decides to travel to Zeniba's home to return the sigil, hoping to break her curse over Haku. Chihiro sets out on a lonely train ride across the spirit world, along with a wraith-like spirit called No Face, who terrorized the bathhouse and tried to earn the affection of Chihiro, and Boh, Yubaba's gigantic infant son whom Zeniba had transformed into a mouse.
The group arrives at Zeniba's house to find that Zeniba is friendlier than expected, and that the curse on Haku was placed on him by Yubaba, but Chihiro's love and caring has broken the spell. Zeniba makes Chihiro a special hairband to show her that her friends are with her, as well as for protection, and No Face is offered to stay at Zeniba's home as her assistant. Haku, now recovered, shows up to return Chihiro to the bathhouse, explaining that Yubaba will return Chihiro's parents to normal and allow all three of them to leave in exchange for returning Boh. As they travel on Haku's dragon form, Chihiro realizes that Haku is the same river spirit that saved her as a small child when she fell into the Kohaku River, and the realization helps to break Yubaba's control on Haku completely. At the bathhouse, Yubaba reveals that Chihiro must pass one more task as part of Haku's deal: identify which pigs in the huge herd are her parents. Chihiro passes the test, as she states that none of them are her parents, and Yubaba is forced to let her and her family go. Haku escorts her to the entrance of the spirit world, telling her that her parents are waiting on the other side, but not to look back or else the deal will be broken. Chihiro rejoins her parents, not once looking back. The family returns to their car, now dusty, to continue to their new home. Zeniba's hair band is still in Chihiro's hair, proving her adventure to be true.
The major themes of Spirited Away center on the protagonist Chihiro and her liminal journey through the realm of the bathhouse of the gods. A spoiled child, forced into the fantastic world, Chihiro becomes completely separated from everything she has known and must find her way back into reality. Chihiro’s experience in the alternate world, frequently compared to Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, represents her passage from childhood to adulthood.[2] The archetypal entrance into another world clearly demarcates Chihiro’s status as one in-between. In her transition between child and adult, Chihiro stands outside these societal boundaries, a situation mirrored by the supernatural setting outside reality. The use of the word kamikakushi, literally "hidden by gods", within the Japanese title, and its associated folklore reinforces this liminal passage: “Kamikakushi is a verdict of ‘social death’ in this world, and coming back to this world from Kamikakushi meant ‘social resurrection.’”[3] Upon gaining employment at the bathhouse, Yubaba’s seizure of Chihiro’s true name, a common theme within folklore, symbolically kills the child Chihiro.[2] Having lost her childhood identity, Chihiro can not return to reality, the way she came, she can only move forward into adulthood. The following trials and obstacles Chihiro must overcome become the challenges and lessons common in rites-of-passage, and the monomyth format. In her attempt to regain her self, her “continuity with her past,” Chihiro must forge a new identity.[4]
Beneath the surface coming-of-age trope, Spirited Away contains critical commentary on modern Japanese society concerning generational conflicts, the struggle with dissolving traditional culture and customs within a global society, and environmental pollution.[5] Chihiro, as a representation of the liminal shōjo, “may be seen as a metaphor for the Japanese society which, over the last decade, seems to be increasingly in limbo, drifting uneasily away from the values and ideological framework of the immediate postwar era.”[6] Just as Chihiro seeks her past identity, Japan, in its anxiety over the economic downturn occurring during the release of Spirited Away in 2001, sought to reconnect to past values.[7] In interview, Miyazaki has commented on this nostalgic element for an old Japan.[8] Initially, Chihiro travels past the abandoned fair ground, a symbol for Japan’s burst “bubble economy,” and her parent’s credit card fuelled gluttony and transformation into pigs, to reach the fantasy world replete with Japanese culture and fable in the amalgam of the bathhouse.
However, the “bathhouse of the spirits has its own ambivalence, and its own darkness…. Miyazaki is not so simple-minded as to locate a perfect vision in the past or the spiritual.”[9] Many of the employees are rude and discriminating to Chihiro, and the corruption of avarice has incorporated itself into the “bricolage” of the bathhouse[10] as a place of “excess and greed” as well, as depicted in the initial appearance of the No-Face.[11] . In stark contrast to the “archetypal approaches to cultural recovery such as recognition, proper identification, spiritual cleansing, and sacrifice,” embodied in Chihiro’s journey and transformation, the constant background presence of the ambiguity of the bathhouse reminds the audience that reality is not so simple: “the bathhouse’s simultaneous incorporation of the carnivalesque and the chaotic suggests that the threats to the collectivity are not simply outside ones.”[12] The environmental asides concerning the trash deforming the Stink-god and Haku’s plight over the loss of his river to apartment complexes, further indicate that the sources of pollution within the bathhouse, a place of ritual purity, come from within the Japanese society.
| I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. It'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[13] |
Spirited Away was directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki. Every summer, Miyazaki spent his vacation at a mountain cabin with his family and five young female friends. The idea for Spirited Away came about when he desired to make a film for these friends. Miyazaki had previously done films such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, which were for small children and teenagers, but he had not done a film for ten-year-old girls. For inspiration, he read shōjo manga magazines such as Nakayoshi and Ribon that the girls had left at the cabin. When Miyazaki read the magazines he felt that they only offered things such as crushes and romance. When looking at his young friends, Miyazaki felt this was not what they "held dear in their hearts", so instead he decided to make the film about a girl heroine that they could look up to.[13]
Miyazaki had wanted to make a new film for a long time. He had previously written two project proposals, but they had both been rejected. The first one was based on the Japanese book Kirino Mukouno Fushigina Machi, and the second one was about a teenage heroine. Miyazaki's third proposal, which ended up becoming Spirited Away, was more successful. All three stories revolves around a bathhouse that was based on a bathhouse in Miyazaki's hometown. Miyazaki thought the bathhouse was a mysterious place, and there was a small door next to one of the bathtubs in the bathhouse. Miyazaki was always curious to what was behind it, and he made up several stories about it; one of which was the inspiration for the bathhouse in Spirited Away.[13]
The film went into production in 2000, with a budget of 1.9 billion yen (15 million dollars). In his previous film, Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki and his staff had experimented with the process of computer animation. Equipping themselves with more computers and programs like 3D, the Studio Ghibli staff began to learn the software, but keeping the technology at a level to enhance the story, not "steal the show". All the characters were largely animated by hand, with Miyazaki working alongside his animators to see that they were getting it just right.[14] The biggest difficulty in making the film was to cut its length down. When production started, Miyazaki realized that it would be more than three hours long if he made it according to his plot. He had to cut many scenes from the story, and tried to reduce the "eye-candy" in the film because he wanted it to be simple. Miyazaki did not want to make the heroine a pretty girl. At the beginning, he was frustrated that she looked "dull" and thought, "She isn't cute. Isn't there something we can do?". As the film neared the end, however, he was relieved to feel that "she will be a charming woman".[13]
Miyazaki based the buildings in the spirit world on the buildings in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. He often visited the museum for inspiration while working on the film. Miyazaki had always been interested in the Pseudo-Western style buildings from the Meiji period that were available there. The museum made Miyazaki feel nostalgic, "especially when I stand here alone in the evening, near closing time, and the sun is setting – tears well up in my eyes."[13]
Walt Disney Pictures dubbed the English adaption of Spirited Away, under the supervision of Pixar's John Lasseter. Lasseter was a "huge" Miyazaki fan, and he and his staff had often sat down and watched some of Miyazaki's work when they hit story problems. The first viewing of Spirited Away in the United States was in Pixar's screening room. After seeing the film, Lasseter was "ecstatic". Upon hearing his reaction to the film, people at Disney asked Lasseter if he would be interested in trying to bring Spirited Away to an American audience. Lasseter said that he had a busy schedule, but agreed to executive produce the English adaption. Soon, several others began to join the project. Beauty and the Beast co-director Kirk Wise and Aladdin producer Donald W. Ernst soon joined Lasseter as director and producer of Spirited Away respectively.[15]
The cast of the film consisted of Daveigh Chase (Chase had voiced Lilo for Disney's "Lilo & Stitch"), Susan Egan (Megara from "Hercules"), David Ogden Stiers (A Disney mainstay in voice talent), and John Ratzenberger (considered by John Lasseter as his "good luck charm"). With the cast and talent in place, word began to spread around the net. But at first, the buzz was light. Disney had already begun to push their upcoming fall films, but the only trace that "Spirited Away" was coming was in a small scrolling section of their movie page on Disney.com. The promotions were also quite trying, as Disney had sidelined their homepage for "Spirited Away" and hidden it in the confines of Buena Vista's many labyrinths. While homepages for films like "Signs" and "Sweet Home Alabama" were clearly displayed, it was only through some people's curiosity that the "Spirited Away" homepage could be found.[15]
Based on 153 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes,[16] it ranks as the fifth-best animated film, having a 97% rating on the site.[17] The film occupies the rank of #60 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies list as of December 2008.[18] The Anime Critic gave it a 4 and 1/2 out of five stars.[19]
Spirited Away was released in Japan in July 2001, drawing an audience of around 23 million and revenues of ¥30 billion (approx. US$300 million), to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history (surpassing the film Princess Mononoke for highest grossing animated motion pictures). It was the first movie to have earned $200 million at the worldwide box office before opening in the United States.[20] By 2002, a sixth of the Japanese population had seen it.
The film was dubbed into English by Walt Disney Pictures, under the supervision of Pixar's John Lasseter. It was subsequently released in the United States on September 20, 2002 and had made slightly over $10 million by September 2003.[21] As of 2008 this film has earned $264,869,236 worldwide.[22]
The film was released in North America by Disney's Buena Vista Distribution arm on DVD format on April 15, 2003 where the attention brought by the Oscar win made the title a strong seller.[23] Spirited Away is often marketed, sold and associated with other Miyazaki movies such as Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
The North American English-dubbed version was released on DVD in the UK on March 29, 2004. In 2005 it was re released by Optimum Releasing with a more accurate subtitle track and additional bonus features.
The back of the Region 1 DVD from Disney and the Region 4 DVD from Madman states that the aspect ratio is the original ratio of 2.00:1. This is incorrect; the ratio is actually 1.85:1 but has been windowboxed to 2.00:1 to compensate for the overscan on most television sets. There is much dispute over the validity of this practice, as many displays are capable of showing the entire picture, and as a result the DVD picture has a noticeable border around it.
All Asian releases of the DVD (including Japan and Hong Kong) have a noticeably accentuated amount of red in their picture transfer. This is another case of compensating for home theatre displays, this time supposedly for LCD television which, it was claimed, had a diminished red colour in its display. Releases in other DVD regions such as the U.S., Europe and Australia use a picture transfer where this "red tint" has been significantly reduced.
The closing song, "Always With Me" (いつも何度でも, Itsumo Nandodemo?, literally, "Always, No Matter How Many Times") was written and performed by Yumi Kimura, a composer and lyre-player from Osaka. The lyrics were written by Kimura's friend Wakako Kaku. The song was intended to be used for a different Miyazaki film which was never released, Rin the Chimney Painter (煙突描きのリン, Entotsu-kaki no Rin?). In the special features of the DVD, Hayao Miyazaki explains how the song in fact inspired him to create Spirited Away.
The other 20 tracks on the original soundtrack were composed by Joe Hisaishi. His "The River of That Day" (あの日の川, Ano hi no Kawa?) received the 56th Mainichi Film Competition Award for Best Music, the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2001 Best Music Award in the Theater Movie category, and the 16th Japan Gold Disk Award for Animation Album of the Year. Later, Hisaishi added lyrics to "Ano hi no Kawa" and named the new version "The Name of Life" (いのちの名前, "Inochi no Namae"?) which was performed by Ayaka Hirahara.
Beside the Original Soundtrack, there is also an Image Album, which contains 10 tracks.
| Track | Author | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One Summer's Day (あの夏へ, Ano Natsuhe?) | Joe Hisaishi (久石譲?) | 3:09 |
| 2 | Road To Somewhere (とおり道, Toori Michi?) | 2:07 | |
| 3 | Empty Restaurant (誰もいない料理店, Dare mo Inai Ryōriten?) | 3:15 | |
| 4 | Nighttime Coming (夜来る, Yoru Kuru?) | 2:00 | |
| 5 | Dragon Boy (竜の少年, Ryū no Shōnen?) | 2:12 | |
| 6 | Sootballs (ボイラー虫, Boirā Mushi?) | 2:33 | |
| 7 | Procession Of The Spirits (神さま達, Kami-samatachi?) | 3:00 | |
| 8 | Yubaba (湯婆婆?) | 3:30 | |
| 9 | Bathhouse Morning (湯屋の朝, Yuya no Asa?) | 2:02 | |
| 10 | Day Of The River (あの日の川, Ano Hi no Kawa?) | 3:13 | |
| 11 | It's Hard Work (仕事はつらいぜ, Shigoto wa Tsuraize?) | 2:26 | |
| 12 | Stink Spirit (おクサレ神, Okusare-kami?) | 4:01 | |
| 13 | Sen's Courage (千の勇気, Sen no Yūki?) | 2:45 | |
| 14 | Bottomless Pit (底なし穴, Sokonashi Ana?) | 1:18 | |
| 15 | No Face (カオナシ, Kaonashi?) | 3:47 | |
| 16 | Sixth Station (6番目の駅, Roku-banme no Eki?) | 3:38 | |
| 17 | Yubaba's Panic (湯婆婆狂乱, Yubaba Kyōran?) | 1:38 | |
| 18 | House At Swamp Bottom (沼の底の家, Numa no Soko no Ie?) | 1:29 | |
| 19 | Reprise (ふたたび, Futatabi?) | 4:53 | |
| 20 | The Return Day (帰る日, Kaeru Hi?) | 3:20 | |
| 21 | Always With Me (いつも何度でも, Itsu mo Nando demo?) | Yumi Kimura (木村弓?) | 3:35 |
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Intimacy |
Golden Bear winner 2002 tied with Bloody Sunday |
Succeeded by In This World |
| Preceded by After the Rain |
Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year 2002 |
Succeeded by The Twilight Samurai |
|
|||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||
stock | retire | vm
Why are we here?
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
This page is cache of Wikipedia. History