Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
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Spirited Away
Sunday, March 30, 2003
11:58 PM
[this is a review I wrote on 9/30/02, dug up for a friend now that the film's won a well-deserved Oscar]
Speak harshly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes!
He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases!
,,,,,,,,,,,[Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!]
..................................... -- "lewis carroll" Alice in Wonderland
Isn't it a pity that many children will never be creeped out and really
fascinated and engaged in Alice in Wonderland, because they only ever saw
it on a screen?
I just returned from seeing Spirited Away (subtitled version) at the Loew's
Theatre in Times Square. From my hotel, if you cut through the McDonald's,
between the backdoor at 41st St and the front door at 42nd St, then wait
for the light at the crosswalk halfway down the block between Broadway and
"Fashion" Avenues, it's just about right there. I came 3000 miles today to
see this film, and had to commit to going on a four day insane business
trip to get to do it.
When we got a DVD player recently (finally), I asked Joseph what he wanted
the first DVD we bought to be, and he picked Princess Mononoke. Good
taste! There is real magick in Miyazaki's work, and when I heard that
Spirited Away (http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/sen/) had become the
highest grossing film in Japan ever, outstripping Titanic, I began to wait
with bated breath for the film to come to the states.
Living in Portland, Oregon, I might never see the subtitled version there,
though we'd likely get the dub. But as soon as I settled in at my hotel, I
got the first possible ticket.
I held my breath and crossed the bridge...
Miyazaki's film is more than breathtakingly beautiful -- that amazing
melange of focus that epitomizes anime, with the 2d figures passing in
front of landscapes and background elements that obviously outstrip the
foreground characters. This film creates a reality that is a welter of
fear, wonder, terror, love, beauty, devotion, callousness, and cuteness --
with an Alice-like sense of the absurd.
Here's the difference -- for those of you who are familiar with "hot and
cold media" in McLuhan, Alice's rabbit hole is "hot." Carroll shoves you
into loosely veiled absurdities that represent the realities of his Oxford
life, and with a Pythonesque (or is that backwards? ;) "wink wink nod nod,"
he makes you laugh at his silly translations.
Spirited Away is "cool." It presents you with action, and compels the
minds eye to create a completely novel reality around the scraps of
patterns of light, reflected on the floor, painting dragons in the motes of
dust in a sunbeam. It's mimetic jazz. I am swept up in that sense of
wonder I remember from childhood as I tried to figure out what all this
reality *was* flowing around me.
Alice, translated to film, loses content. Spirited Away creates content
within the viewer. Everything about it calls up half remembered things you
may never have seen before. In the spirit of the thing itself, I won't
review a bit of the movie itself -- the medium is the message.
Experience the medium. Go see this. In the subtitled version, if
possible, assuming the dub is as trashy as Mononoke's (sorry Billy Bob!).
May your dreams be rich!
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