Spirited Away
The first time I saw Spirited Away was in a hospital bed. I had almost bled out due to a spleen injury, and this experience propelled my mother to tell me exactly how my daddy died a year prior. Long story short, the man offed himself, and one of my mom’s coworkers brought me Spirited Away (and Ponyo) on disc. So there I was as I watched Spirited Away: a child who was lost and confused, having experienced too much and grown too fast. Shit opened me up, you feel? I needed to do that. I needed to make film. It was the only possibility. I was in the third grade, and my obsession has never disappeared. My dedication to this thing I had found—these emotions that I felt myself chasing—revealed itself to be never-ending. Spirited Away taught me faith. Film gave me everything, and it is for that reason I feel as if I have a responsibility to film. To provide the world with my perspective—to give at least a single soul that feeling I caught during that night in the hospital.
Fast forward to today, and I see the impact Spirited Away had in forming my own artistic values. When looking at my favorite films, they come from all over the place. I hold this innate obligation to perspective, and that obligation leads me all across the world. From L.A. to Lebanon, I need to give myself to the world and humanity as a whole. Ever since childhood, I’ve known that truth wasn’t going to be found in my isolation. I have to find it as it lies hidden amidst all of us. I remember just sitting in silence throughout my life, always listening to every single conversation that traveled into my orbit. But then, I actually look at the individual films:
Killer of Sheep: A Black man’s pain in working at a slaughterhouse transforms into an entire portrait of Blackness on a communal level, observing how communities move through an environment designed to create a void inside the marginalized masses. Funeral Parade of Roses: As she attempts to find freedom within her Greek tragedy, the dehumanization and disillusionment of a trans woman morph into a documentarian reflection of communal queerness and the political landscape of Japan. Leila and the Wolves: A Lebanese photographer’s reflection on her womanhood exposes generations of collective revolutionary action among all women in Lebanon and Palestine. A Brighter Summer Day: An empathetic analysis of what prompted a single murder evolves into an image of the history and sociopolitical struggle of an entire country.
They are all the same movie in different contexts: a narrative structure where the individual is presented as a reflection and product of the collective experience. It all was subconsciously sparked by Spirited Away. The generation coming out of Japan’s economic crisis is condensed into Chihiro, as Japan’s children are forced to cope with the chaos of this capitalistically formed environment they are being brought up under. It is the same structure, and it is insane to realize how fundamental Spirited Away really was.
I am not gonna do a whole analysis of the text, but I want to make note of one character. During this rewatch, I found myself transfixed by No-Face: the spirit of all marginalized souls trapped within this system, namely Japan’s homeless population. No face, no voice, no name—the theme of identity and capitalistically produced dehumanization is personified. Chihiro’s innocence renders her without prejudice. She does not know to inflict any judgment onto this soul, so she lets No-Face into this environment of compulsive capital. The innocence of his soul—one that is not so dissimilar from the innocence of children presented in the text—leads him to observe how bodies move within this space, how power is exchanged, and how the validation he has been starved of can be earned. Through his reactionary performance of capitalism’s principles, No-Face absorbs the identity of those surrounding him as he executes the only thing he has witnessed in this environment: consumption.
The act of consumption can be found throughout the film as both a necessity for survival and a corrupting factor, greatly forming the symbolic structure of the film. The sins of capitalism become evident by who our systems neglect, as the socially and economically marginalized are forced to perform capitalism's virtues solely out of pure deprivation of resources and connection.
One of the most infamous interpretations of Spirited Away is that the film is a symbolic depiction of sex work. Though I do not believe that this reading is given out of good faith, the exploitation of young women during the lost decade—which included numerous forms of sex work—was undoubtedly observed by Miyazaki in the conceptualization of Spirited Away. The culture of exploitation and consumption manufactured by a highly industrialized society is the key producer of sin among the disenfranchised, and this is what is seen in No-Face: the institutionalization of marginalized populations. It is this context that makes Chihiro’s rejection of No-Face so powerful to me. Ultimately, I believe that Miyazaki wanted to show the younger generation the strength and spiritual security they held. The children hold the power to reject these institutions and the spiritual failings created by Miyazaki and the previous generations. Chihiro’s rejection of the bathhouse—and by extension, society’s—rules is what saved the marginalized spirit from self-destruction, eventually leading him to the community he ultimately needed.
In my eyes, Spirited Away is Miyazaki’s best work due to the faith held towards his subjects. One of my main critiques of Miyazaki’s art is that his voice is often overly present in his analysis of serious topics. However humanistic and “correct” his works may be, his intellectual and spiritual individualism is evident in the politics of Mononoke, HMC, etc. Spirited Away may be his most political work, bordering on being a Marxist dissection of capitalism on both a social and institutional level, but Miyazaki is able to give the text to his subjects: Japan’s youth. It returns to the idea of authorial suicide I have previously discussed. To me, the physicality and external nature of filmic expression leads to an art form that requires the death of ego. Film is a disappearing act for the artist as they are forced to give their vision to the collective. In Spirited Away, Miyazaki finally performed that magic trick, ultimately capturing a state of reality that could never be experienced by him yet could only be realized through his vision.
Any single individual cannot create truth. Truth is created by the movement of thought and the progression of humanity; therefore, truth can only be revealed to us through complete observation: the active decision to give oneself to the experiences of the collective. It is for this reason why I view cinema as the art form closest to the truth. The mission of film is not in the recreation of reality, as a reformation can only distort what was already fully formed to begin with. Rather, the apex of filmmaking can only come from the commitment to observe what already is there.
In my mind, Spirited Away is exactly that ideal realized. Unlike his other films, Miyazaki never makes any grand statements about the political realities being presented because the text is not serving him or any hypothetical intellectual. The text serves the children above all else, guiding them by simply observing their experiences. Any and all critique is performed through the emotional language of children. That is why it’s so successful.
I remember when I first saw the train scene. I was in that hospital bed, and at the time, I’m sure that I couldn’t explain why it affected me so deeply… but I started crying. A home that Chihiro currently lacks is found in the distance, surrounded by a great sea. The spirits of the dead surround her as she continues to move forward. A little girl is seen from outside the train’s window: a reflection of Chihiro’s mortality. A moment of silence; a moment of peace. I don’t think that I ever got a moment to reflect on my own loss and displacement until that scene. I couldn’t explain why it affected me so deeply, but the images followed me throughout my adolescence. It is for this reason I consider film the art of the people. You don’t have to comprehend an image to feel it—to understand it. The meaning of an image is innate, regardless of one’s cognitive ability or personal awareness. I will spend my entire career simply trying to create something as spiritually pure as Spirited Away’s train scene. I will spend my entire life just… trying to chase the scene’s power over me and to give it back to the people. And for that, I am eternally grateful for Miyazaki and his crew.