‘Spirited Away’ — maybe the best animated movie ever

A podcast I’m a big fan of, Blank Check with Griffin and David, is going through the filmography of Hayao Miyazaki, so before I listen to each episode I want to get my own bloggorific thoughts written down here.

With previous Miyazaki pictures, I have been effusive (Mononoke), I have been stumped on how to properly begin (Porco), and I have been loving, if a little distant (My Neighbor Totoro).

For Spirited Away, however, I run the risk of sounding outright dismissive. I mean, what is there to say? This is simply a wonderful movie that also just might be the best.

Not “the best” as a descriptor of its excellence, either. I mean that actually, wholeheartedly, I believe there is a possibility that Spirited Away is simply The Best Movie. This seems like hyperbole and perhaps it is, and yet there are moments in Spirited Away that touched me so deeply that just thinking about them can start me crying.

I love the music, I love the visuals, I love the message of the story and all of the characters inside it. I love how much Miyazaki cares and I love his attention to detail and his apparent philanthropic love when it comes not only to humans but to the natural world around us and the (potentially metaphorical) spirit world of the Bathhouse. I love this movie and cannot come up with a good reason why anyone shouldn’t watch it.

By the same ticket, I cannot think of what else to say, and it makes me scared. I am scared to listen to the Blank Check episode when I finally do, because I do not know what I will think once I’ve heard what Griffin and David think. However, the movie will always be here, so other people and their own thoughts on it don’t really matter, I guess.

I have a lot more to say about Howl’s, so expect a more interesting blog from that film next time :)