I have always loved animation films. They have a lot more tools at their disposal to present the flights of imagination. Spirited Away is one of the scintillating peaks when it comes to animations for numerous reasons.
I saw this recently as it used to turn up quite frequently on many must-watch animations list. Spirited Away is a tale of a young girl who unbeknownst to her ends up in a spirit realm. Her family is driving to a new town where her father is now posted. She is not very happy that she has to move and let go of her friends and the school in the old city. So she is very annoyed and cranky throughout the road journey to the new town. While searching for their home, they end up crossing the borders of human and the spirit world. However, when they make this inadvertent mistake the onus is on her to make the family whole again.
The movie is brilliant because it appeals and works at three significantly different levels.
The Technical side. This Hayao Miyazaki film consists of hand-drawn animations having great details. Many of the scenes which feature only for a few seconds in the narrative are also drawn in detailed and immersed manner. It shows the dedication towards the craft and the desire to give a complete and whole package to the audience. It is the expression of the animator and that shows, that he is willing to go the extra mile and make the best effort when creating his art. If you compare this with Disney's work, Spirited Away feels more organic and real. This reminds me of old Indian temples having hand-sculpted idols across temple walls. Even if one of the idols is going to be at a rarely visited obscure corner of the temple, no less effort is taken on it. It is still as accurate and beautiful as the rest of the temple.
But the technical side alone may not draw the mainstream audience to the theatres, you need a great story for that. That is another big highlight of this film. The story of Spirited Away works for both Adults and Kids. If you just look at the story from a kid's perspective, you'd distinctly remember Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. The flights of imagination are all there. For a young girl who is moving away from her home, this new world could be an enchanting fairy tale. This is where the Japenese film differs from its western counterparts. The responsibility that the movie puts on the girl's young shoulders is crushing. She needs to be very careful and defiant to bring back her family together. There are a lot of clear learnings for kids. It is not a sugar dipped fairy tale. It has harsh realities, it has decision points which test the mettle of our young protagonist and as a young one watching the film, it does have a lasting impact on the psyche.
For adults, there is a lot to offer other than a simple fairy tale. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from folklore and uses those elements to make you think on the social structures, capitalism, and some dark realities like kids being sold into sex slavery at a very young age. These elements are not apparent. You have to peel the veneer off of the story and think about what more the director is trying to tell us. I think the success is mostly due to the ability to blend in two messages in the same story.
Apart from the technical attention to detail, there is also much thought given to how a 10-year-old girl will behave. Her mannerisms, the way she holds her mom's elbow and pulls while walking, or when she slows down while walking as she gets lost in the sights and then rushes back to her parents. These small observations make her character very believable.
Although most of the characters take inspiration from Japenese folklore, the only character which does not draw inspiration from it is No-Face and it was the most enigmatic character from the film for me. I would have loved a more rounded and detailed ending. Especially for the sake of No-Face. His arc felt rushed or somewhat unconvincing, but that depends on how you perceive the film.
This was the first Studio Ghibli film distributed widely in North America giving Americans the taste of a different style of animation. That increased market is also a reason for its popularity. To quote Wiki on pure popularity numbers,
The film was originally released in Japan on 20 July 2001 by distributor Toho. It became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $347 million worldwide. The film overtook Titanic (the top-grossing film worldwide at the time) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of ¥30.8 billion. Spirited Away received universal acclaim and is frequently ranked among the greatest animated films ever made. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, making it the first (and, to date, only) hand-drawn and non-English-language animated film to win that award. It was the co-recipient of the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (shared with Bloody Sunday) and is in the top 10 on the British Film Institute's list of "Top 50 films for children up to the age of 14"
Needless to say, it gets a recommendation from me. Especially in the trying times like the lockdown, as a family sit together and enjoy this lovely spirited tale of Chihiro and get lost in the world of the spirits. It is available on Netflix.
There are several serials with a protagonist applying out of the box techniques to solve crimes. Somehow they take inspiration from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic Sherlock Holmes. He has a particular sentence which he keeps shouting about, 'You all see, but you don't observe'
The mentalist is on the same lines. There have been many and I'm sure there will be many too, but this sets a different place in viewers mind because of the back story and execution.
Each one of us has a frustrating part which believes if the criminals don't follow rules, then why should the police, they should be given free rein with all the unorthodox methods for finding the culprits. The mentalist gives this particular emotion a vent. The lead of this series, Mr Patrick Jane is very well versed in hot reading, cold reading, manipulation, keen observation, deduction etc. Though he uses these skills to help the Police solve crimes, he has an open agenda of revenge. That's something that connects him with the audience. He works with Detective Lisbon, the formal head of the team. She being a girl adds the balance on screen.
Do not go expecting mind benders and complex plots. There scarcely are any thrilling moments (Go see Sherlock for that) The show wins in terms of execution. The relations between fellow team members. Relations between Jane and Lisbon are convincing. Patrick Jane acted by Simon Baker is the most pleasing of them all. His charming, playful demeanour seals it for me at least.
to summarize, the following things make the show a success.
A lead character with a tragic back story that connects
Execution and inter-team relations
Mr Simon Baker
