Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki

After watching Spirited Away (2002) by Hayao Miyazaki, I am still surprised and amazed at his film although watching it many times. I am amazed at the details that are in the film, it shows how much hard work and time is needed to produce it. The details in the film are not only in the main characters, but also in the background of the scene and the sub characters that are not even important.

Besides that, the creativity of the film is outstanding. As people usually visualize spirits as scary stuff and usually in a form of ghosts, Hayao Miyzaki imagines otherwise, showing us that there is more than just what we could imagine other than just ghosts. For example, the cricket spirit is depicted in the film in the form of humans in kimonos, river spirits are depicted as dragons, the radish spirit is depicted as a fat radish looking creature wearing a hat and whole lots of other spirits that we may not imagine.

The film itself contains a lot of moral values, as one of the moral value that is clearly shown in the film is greed kills. This starts off at the beginning of the film by showing Chihiro's parents being arrogant and greedy, this is shown by Chihiro's father greedily taking all the food and proudly saying he has credit card and cash. They later become pigs because they were too arrogant to listen to Chihiro. Another example is the character "No Face" using the power of greed to catch spirits as his food or to do its bidding. This is clearly shown in the film as he offers golds to the characters which they could not resist and then eats them. Chihiro however, contradicts this by showing she is a humble, kind, honest and frugal character. The film uses her to show that being humble, kind, honest and frugal will keep her out of trouble and will be safe in the end. For example, although "No Face" offers her food and a lot of gold, she refuses and kindly turns down the offer. And after all "No Face" had did to her, she is still kind and forgiving towards it, this is shown by her by letting "No Face" following her to find Zeniba, she also offers a seat for "No Face" to sit beside her.

This film also shows the environment is in trouble caused my mankind. In the film, they show that the river is getting polluted by showing the "Stink god" which is actually a river spirit covered in rubbish and dirt going to the bathhouse to clean himself. It clearly shows the audience about seriousness of the pollution by showing the characters helping each other to pull all the rubbish out of the river spirit. The film clearly show the seriousness of the issue by showing the huge pile of rubbish being pulled and poured out onto the floor.

In conclusion Spirited Away is a very beautiful and meaningful film from Hayao Miyazaki. Besides from all the moral values that it could teach the audiences, it also educates the people on the seriousness on the global issue which is pollution.