My Life at the Movies 4.14.09: 2002 - Spirited Away

Posted by DC Perry on 04.14.2009

Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can't remember.

In 2002, America had a new world view. For the first time since World War 2, we were the victims of a disastrous attack, and the mood was sullen. If you wanted to see a movie, you had your choice of the dark, moody movies like The Pianist and The Hours or escapist movies like Spider-Man and Star Wars, to bizarre combinations of the two (Chicago). Perfectly mixing the two, fantastically guiding a young girl into adulthood, Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki gave us his masterpiece.



2002 at a Glance

US President: George W. Bush
Median annual salary: $45,200
Gallon of gas: $1.31
Dozen eggs: $1.27
New house: $150,900
New car: $25,145
Movie ticket: $6.15
Boston Red Sox: 93-69, second place, American League East
Me: Battling hypocrites. Teaching brilliant students.


Before you decide to call me out, I know that Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi was released in Japan in 2001. We're going by American release dates here, and Spirited Away's American release didn't come until 2002. I will also be referring to the American voice talent, since that's the version I expect most readers are familiar with.

Chihiro (Daveigh Chase) sulks in the back seat of her parents' car, looking at the card enclosed with the bouquet her classmates gave her as a going away gift. She doesn't want to move; starting a new school, making new friends – it's all too overwhelming. While her mother tries to talk her out of her anxieties, her father takes a few wrong turns and makes up for it by driving down back roads like a maniac. He slams on the brakes just before the entrance to an old amusement park, where they find booths filled with food. Chihiro won't touch it since it doesn't belong to her, but her parents dive into the food, promising its unseen owners that they're good for it. She can't watch and she can't convince her parents to leave, so she wanders the park, meeting a young boy named Haku (Jason Marsden), who warns her to get her parents and leave before the sun goes down. Horrified, Chihiro returns to find her parents' gluttony has transformed them into pigs.


Daddy's here. He's got credit cards and cash!

The way leading back to the car has flooded, so Chihiro's only choice is to follow Haku. He leads her across a bridge into the bath house, part of the spirit world that Chihiro and her parents have stumbled upon. Haku sends Chihiro to Kamaji, the boilerman, (David Ogden Stiers), who helps her reach the bath house owner Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette), who is obligated to give a job to anyone who asks. In exchange for her name, Yubaba gives Chihiro a new one, Sen, and puts her to work as a servant girl. Haku takes her to Lin (Susan Egan), an experienced servant girl who helps her, but is suspicious of Haku's motives.

After a trip to her parents' pig pen with Haku, where he returns her clothes, including her going away card with her real name, Chihiro returns to work at the bath house. She and Lin are assigned the largest, filthiest tub. While emptying a bucket, Chihiro notices a guest standing outside in the rain and leaves the door open for him. Lin sends Chihiro to the front desk for an herbal soak token to clean the tub, but he's not willing to give her one. Her newly dry friend, whose name is No Face, takes a token for her, vanishing as the foreman glances in his direction, leaving the token to fall in Chihiro's hands. She takes it to Lin, who uses it to fill the filthy tub with murky, herb-soaked water. Lin leaves to get breakfast, and No Face appears with an armful of bath tokens, holding them out to her. She declines, as she needed only one, much to her new friend's disappointment.


Thanks, but I don't need any more.

A gigantic stink spirit lumbers into the bath house, and Yubaba sends him to Chihiro's tub. She struggles to help him into the bath, and finds the discarded bath tokens near the wall. She refills the tub, but slips, only to be caught by the spirit who holds her to a thorn in his side. When Yubaba learns the thorn is a bicycle handle, she sends the whole bath house staff to help yank a garbage dump worth of junk out of the spirit. Clean, the spirit reveals itself as a river sprit, and gives Chihiro a small herbal cake. It also leaves a small fortune in gold on the floor of the bath house, which sends the servants scrambling to collect it.

The next day, Chihiro sees a severly-injured Haku return to Yubaba's chamber in his true dragon form. She races to help him, but on her way through the bath house, she encounters an enormous No Face surrounded by a horde of dancing servants. No Face naturally noticed everyone's interest in the river spirit's gold, and he offers it to the servants, who aren't as reluctant to take gifts from strangers as Chihiro. As they accept his gifts, they're quickly eaten by No Face, who grows enormous on his steady diet of greedy staff. Chihiro once again declines his gift, baffling and frustrating No Face, who takes it out on the remaining uneaten servants.


But it's strange... only love can remove a seal.

Chihiro reaches Yubaba's chambers and finds a bloodied and unconscious dragon Haku. She gives him the river spirit's herbal cake, hoping it will heal him. Instead, he spits up a sigil belonging to Yubaba's twin sister Zeniba, along with a black slug. Haku remains unconscious, and Chihiro goes on a quest to Zeniba's house to ask her to lift the curse, taking with her Boh, Yubaba's giant baby transformed into a mouse by Zeniba, and a newly deflated No Face, a victim of Chihiro's gift of river spirit cake.


I think being in the bath house makes him crazy. He needs to get out of there.

Zeniba turns out to have a temperament quite opposite of Yubaba's, taking in No Face and revealing that Haku's curse was placed by Yubaba, not by Zeniba. She gives Chihiro a special hair band, created by her friends and protecting her with their love. Haku, recovered from his wounds, arrives to take Chihiro back to Yubaba to rescue her parents. As they fly back to the bath house, Chihiro and Haku realize that Haku is the spirit of the Kohaku River, a river where Chihiro fell as a child, but that has since been filled in for apartment complexes. Their bond was created when he saved her from drowning, and Chihiro now helps Haku recover himself by recovering his true name.


Once you've met someone you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.

At the bath house, Yubaba agrees to exchange Boh for Chihiro's parents, but only if she can correctly identify them among the other pigs. When she passes the test, Haku returns her to the entrance of the spirit world, where her parents are waiting. They remember none of their experience, but Chihiro remembers all of hers.


A new home and a new school. It is a bit scary.
I think I can handle it.

Spirited Away has a number of workable readings. On one level, it's a commentary on Japan's cultural greed and the collapse of its economy (a theme that will probably jump out at American audiences more now than it did when it was first released). From the abandoned park, to Chihiro's parents' eat now, pay later attitude, to their gluttony transforming them into pigs, to the filled-in Kohaku River, Miyazaki roundly criticizes modern Japan without romanticizing the past – the bath house, while charming, is full of deceit and discrimination that hardly mark it as a perfect replacement for the sins of the present.



The more obvious – and probably most pertinent – reading is Chihiro's coming of age story. She works her way through the monomyth step by step, abandoned by her parents, called away by a mysterious stranger, and seeing nothing but water covering her entrance, Chihiro is forced into an adventure with only one way out – through. She loses her childhood identity and she must internalize her new life before she can find her way beyond it. But this coming-of-age story is no indictment of childhood. In fact, it's Chihiro's ability to capture that childhood, to reconnect to her pre-bathhouse self, but to make it the servant of her maturing self that leads her to redemption. Chihiro's innocence and kindness sometimes backfire, as in No-Face's entrance and feeding frenzy, but ultimately redeem her, her parents, and almost everyone she touches. Her transformation from spoiled, whiny child to sturdy, unflinching adult may not be complete by the time she gets back in her parents' car, but the faith she's gained in herself is enormous.