Spirited Away

Shortly before moving out of LA, I went to see the Hayao Miyazaki exhibit at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Studio Ghibli films didn’t find me until my late 20s, or maybe it’s better to say that I didn’t recognize them and let them in until then. I’d seen posters and other materials from My Neighbor Totoro for years just like everyone else, but as happens so many times in life I was just walking past a part of myself I wasn’t ready for yet. I’ve tried to get down into why his work has left such a lasting impression on me, and while I did find some answers for it I don’t really feel the need to write something expository on them. It feels to me like finding a bright purple egret living somewhere in the marshes of yourself. Nothing really to do but enjoy your time around it and feel gratitude that something like that somehow exists.

I was drawn back to one thing this weekend, though, that felt worth pointing out. So many of our stories concern themselves with the hero, and it’s easy for each of us to spend our lives suspecting that the camera might also be following us in the same sort of way. But Miyazaki’s films are filled with lush outgrowths of silence and meditative observation. An awareness of the scale of our natural environment and the wonderful strangeness of its machines that often leaves the individual characters and audience alike feeling vulnerable and reduced. Scenes that remove the distractions of questions like are we alone here or what does my life mean and replaces them with a wide angle lens on the gorgeous textures of a palatial Present. Which is why his films for so many serve as reminders that the gift of life really is just to be alive.

Here’s an example of what I mean. In Spirited Away, two of the characters go on a train ride to visit a witch. The is an important point in the film and if it were a Disney movie, something bad (like a song) would happen during it. Instead, Miyazaki zooms out and lets us breathe with shots like these:

For me, scenes like these in his films are a stunning and reverent reminder that much of our great ecstasy comes from compassionate participation in the broader family of things rather than the monumental achievement of the hero conquering the beast. Those things do happen too, and sometimes that is the story, but for the most part we are the passengers on a beautiful train pulling us through the rich, tapestry-adjacent landscapes of an unconcerned world, and a decent chunk of our modern unhappiness comes from not accepting that. Give Spirited Away a watch if you haven’t yet and if you’re looking for a Christmas present this year that will do some permanent good for someone you love, it should be this.