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I finally rewatched Spirited Away, after not having seen it since I was a kid, and I have to say...it was kind of underwhelming! It felt like a lesser Makoto Shinkai film, and while it had some neat visuals, I feel like other Miyazaki films like Howl's Moving Castle have it beat in that department, and outside of chihiro and the good witch, none of the characters were remotely interesting or likeable. It gets a 6/10 from me.
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Oct 28, 2023 22:47
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 17:13 |
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Having watched the film, letting it digest for several hours, and having read some reviews and thoughts on the film, I think in the end it's an okay film. It definitely feels like this film was made for Miyazaki himself, in order for him to convey his feelings about his legacy and inevitable death. The strong points of the film are in its symbolism and metatextual meaning, as well as the traditional high quality animation you get with a Ghibli film. However, if you aren't aren't keenly aware of Miyazaki's history and legacy, as well as what he's trying to convey with the film, it really does fall on the weaker side of a traditional Ghibli story. The first, second, and final third all feel like separate movies haphazardly mis-mashed together, and a lot of it operates on dream-like logic that gets handwaved away because "it's magic". A lot of stuff like "what actually is the Grey Heron Goblin man" and "why did Natsuko need to go to the tower to give birth" and "why didn't the great grand-uncle just directly meet with Mahito" just doesn't get explained, and the more you think on it, the more frustrating the story as a whole gets. Not everything needs answers, but there wasn't enough here to leave the watcher satisfied-we just use fantastical moments to bridge scene to scene, seemingly without much contribution to the greater narrative themes of the story, metatexual or otherwise. Similarly, most of the character writing was severely lacking-the Grey haron basically immediately becomes mahito's friend after fixing his beak hole, even though he just threatened him 5 seconds beforehand/we aren't given a good reason why Mahito feels so determined to rescue Natsuko, other than the narrative demands it despite it not meshing with his emotions in the first third of the film/the whole "gets bullied at school for being a rich kid leading to him trying to brain himself with a rock" doesn't get enough of an explanation other than "I have malice" at the end of the film. Overall, it's a very underbaked film that I feel is more concerned with conveying Miyazaki's messy emotions and frustrations than telling an actual coherent and satisfying narrative. And while I think there are plenty of anime stories that can tell these kinds of stories effectively, I don't believe that this form of storytelling is Miyazaki's strongsuit as a writer or director. I might recommend this film to people who love Studio Ghibli films and have some knowledge of the creator Miyazaki, but I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.
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Dec 11, 2023 06:38
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i mean who cares about a literal 94 follower twitter nobody who makes such obviously false claims? Whatever happened to not giving attention seekers attention?
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Jan 15, 2024 21:22
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