When East Meets West

By Viraj Patel | Sunday, November 3, 2002

It is kind of sad to see critics and fans getting so worked up about the U.S. release of Spirited Away. The movie was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who in Japan and the in cult-like animé circles in the U.S., is revered as a god walking the earth when it comes to animation. While Spirited Away has made some $234 million in Japan—superseding Titanic as that country's highest grossing movie ever—it does not seem likely that its success will be translated into similar results on these shores. Only three years ago did Miyazaki's previous effort, Princess Mononoke, make its coming out at animé's big-screen débutante ball. But despite the support of thrilled critics and fans citing its $158 million showing in Japan as evidence of its inevitability to succeed in the U.S., it had to be pulled from release after eight weeks because of its failure to catch on with American audiences.

The problem lies in a cultural difference between Japan and the U.S. that is almost as great as the distance between the two countries—OK, maybe not that great. But the Japanese people are much more accepting of beliefs in spirits and the occult. It would not be uncommon to see a shrine built to ward off evil spirits in a Japanese corporate office. So, while the Japanese people have no problem taking a storyline about river spirits and boar-gods and humans all in a tangle, Americans have trouble keeping back a smirk. Plus, the ethnically indeterminate but seemingly part-White, part-Japanese faces with Marvin the Martian-type eyes and snub noses, and the unusual preponderance of waif-like, sexually vulnerable, ten year-old school girls can be creepy.

Nevertheless, Disney, ironically the archenemy of animé fans for what they think are its dull, idealistic stories and irritating singing animals, went to work marketing Spirited for the U.S. and assigned their top-notch animation producer John Lasseter (Toy Story, A Bug's Life) to oversee its dubbing into English. Having learned from Princess Mononoke, which used expensive brand-name actors like Billy Bob Thornton and Claire Danes for voices, Spirited has settled for the likes of Michael Chiklis of the failed sitcom Daddio, Suzanne Pleshette of The Bob Newhart Show, and other unknowns.

Essentially a Japanese Alice in Wonderland, Spirited concerns the travails of Chihiro (Daveigh Chase), a na've, young girl whose parents seem to be a little too accommodating to her whiny outbursts. As she sits in the back of her parent's car on the way to their new home in the country, her father takes a wrong turn, and they end up in an abandoned amusement park that, unknown to them, is haunted by spirits. The father, oddly looking more like a fat American than a fat Japanese, is in any event hungry, and the lure of an extravagant, freshly-prepared feast of various meats lying unattended in one of the carnival stands gets to him. The mother soon joins him, but Chihiro, understandably a little chary of eating food unexplainably left unattended, wanders off irritated and wanting to leave.

While walking on a bridge leading to a large bathhouse that will later play a large role in the movie, she unexpectedly encounters a young boy dressed like Ken from Street Fighter who tells her she must immediately leave the park. She is quick to obey, but when she returns to the location of the feast, she finds that the hundreds of pounds of food are gone and that her parents have turned into giant pigs. It is at once both comical and horrific, but leave the kids at home.

From here the story becomes only more bizarre, as Chihiro discovers that the park is now completely surrounded by water preventing her from leaving. Also, an evil sorceress named Yubaba has put a spell on her parents as punishment for eating food intended for spirits and gods who are to be guests at her bathhouse that night. As Chihiro sits hapless by the shore, the boy returns and introduces himself as Haku (Jason Marsden). He is an apprentice of Yubaba, but he is sympathetic to Chihiro's desire to rescue her parents and leave the island because he has been forced to work for Yubaba against his will. First, as Haku tells her, she must sneak into the bathhouse and find the eight-armed Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers), and get him to give her a job so that Yubaba does not turn her into a pig too. Having a job, apparently, blocks Yubaba's pig spell.

Now fully into the realm of fantasy, Miyazaki is free to invent whatever arbitrary test Chihiro must pass or requirement she must meet in order to achieve her goal of escape. To get her job approved, for example, she must sneak (I'm not sure why she has to do all this sneaking) up to the top of the bathhouse to talk to Yubaba. When Chihiro finally gets there after crawling through various passages and hopping from elevator to elevator, we finally get a glimpse of Yubaba who looks like an obese Bea Arthur made up like a cheap whore. She is furious that a 'filthy, smelly human' has intruded into her bathhouse. Spirits do not look upon humans very nicely; we 'mess up everything.' Despite Yubaba's best efforts to discourage her, Chihiro persists in asking for the job, and eventually Yubaba concedes. Chihiro passes the test, the first of many more to come, before the movie ends as you might guess with Chihiro and family escaping back into the real world.

Sprited Away is not a bad movie. Chihiro is an undeniably cute little kid acted well by Daveigh Chase. And Miyazaki offers scenery of such detail and beauty perhaps unseen before in animation. But even if you can get past the weird animé conventions, the incoherent, convoluted plot is bound to make you long for the days of Speed Racer and his simple quest to become the world's fastest kid driver.

When East Meets West

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