Director: Miyazaki Hayao Spirited Away, directed by Japanese anime master Miyazaki Hayao in 2002, tells a fascinating and frightening adventure story of a little girl named Chihiro. It's hard to describe the artistry and magic of this movie in words, but we invited Miyazaki Hayao fan and admirable movie magician guillermo del toro to share his feelings:
I found Miyazaki Hayao when I was a child. I remember reading a passage written by Miyazaki Hayao (and his colleague and animator Gao Tianxun) in the movie Cat in Boots. In this set of shots, an ogre runs through a series of rocks, which is typical of Miyazaki Hayao chasing in a crumbling tower. I remember liking that movie very much. I have watched it several times.
Years later, as a young adult, I looked at My Neighbor Totoro and was moved to tears. Basically, the beauty in the film and the great success in capturing children's innocence made me cry. I found all his works at once. Some people call him the Disney of the East, but I think this statement is extremely inappropriate: Miyazaki Hayao is completely sui generis.
In Spirited Away, what you see is a girl who is about to become a teenager. In a symbolic and practical sense, her childhood has passed. At the beginning of the story, Chihiro was a child. Her sitting posture, when we first saw her, the way she sat in the car with her legs crossed, was completely a child's posture. She changed from a child to a girl, and became independent in manners, dress, attitude, emotion and spirit. In this case, she had to go through the process of losing everything. She is an excellent and strong child. She lost her parents and her name. She doesn't have a name. Her name is sen, and she is nothing. There is a beautiful but very sad meditation in the film, and all the films in Miyazaki Hayao are filled with this sadness.
Miyazaki Hayao has a unique ability to create monsters. Their design is brand-new, but the feeling they give is derived from ancient legends. They seem to represent primitive power, and in many cases, they seem to represent the spirit rooted in soil and geomantic omen. They are very primitive.
He is always looking for tolerance or strength, who can equally empower good people and bad people and treat destructive monsters and beneficial monsters with tolerance. This is his beauty. He understands that a basic principle is not to pursue anything good, because some things will obviously go bad. Don't pursue the beauty of something just because it will obviously become ugly. Remember one thing, don't forget your initiative.
Of course, I have great feelings for Miyazaki Hayao. In The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, I tried to express his sense of loss, sadness and tragedy. At a certain moment, what beauty brings you cannot be described in words. This is not because it is created, but because it is an artistic act, and you know, you won't meet such a pure thing in nature. Miyazaki Hayao has this ability.