IMDb

Films by Hayao Miyazaki

If there’s the slimmest of silver linings to this pandemic, it’s that we got the chance to do the sort of personal projects we normally put off. Watching the films of Hayao Miyazaki was one of those things I always told myself I would do when I had the time. Lo and behold, a world in crisis had created the time and HBO Max provided the means by containing nearly all the Japanese animator’s output across three decades.

It wasn’t hard to fall for Miyazaki’s work. All of his movies are painstakingly animated by hand, using the medium to tell simple stories that are life affirming without being saccharine, the narrowest of tightropes to walk. But I don’t think I was ready for 2001’s “Spirited Away” by the time I got to it.

“Spirited Away” tells the story of Chihiro, a 10-year-old girl who moves to a new town. On the way to their new house, Chihiro and her parents take a detour and stumble upon an abandoned theme park. In short order, the theme park reveals itself to be a portal to the spirit world and Chihiro’s parents transform into pigs after dining on a mysterious meal. Chihiro spends the rest of the movie trying to escape the employ of a malevolent witch and save her parents.

I’m not doing the film justice, not only by glossing over the nuances of plot for the sake of brevity, but also because the film transcends words. How do you describe a movie that’s also about greed and modernization and collective purpose? How do you talk about a film that doesn’t talk about any of those themes explicitly, but rings in your head for days afterward because of its conviction and moral clarity?

I can’t really answer those questions, but I don’t need to. “Spirited Away” can be viewed whenever you want, provided you have the time.

— Antonio Sierra, reporter, East Oregonian