studio:
Rex Entertainment, Madhouse
director: Satoshi Kon producer: Hiroaki Inoue screenwriter: Sadayuki Murai cinematographer: Hisao Shirai art director: Nobutaka Ike composer: Masahiro Ikumi editor: Harutoshi Ogata duration: 80 minutes cast: Junko Iwao Rica Matsumoto year: 1997
aspects that are difficult to pull off in a live-action film, but when it comes to a film that could have been filmed using live actors, the ques- tion arises as if live-action film is the default mode of film-making and animation is some kind of special case or aberration. In fact, animation came about before live-action cinema, and therefore has a longer his- tory; one way to think of live-action cinema is simply as a form of anima- tion that uses photorealistic elements as its raw materials. However, the common assumption is that if a film can be made as a live-action film, then it should be, although the more interesting part of the Perfect Blue is not necessarily the narrative, but how it plays out onscreen.
As Mima gets more involved in the acting world, she seems to lose her grip on reality and becomes unable to tell which parts of her life are truth and which parts are fiction. Kon seems to want to impart this feeling of uncertainty to the audience as well and it is for this reason that Perfect Blue is particularly suited for animation. As animation critic and historian Fred Patten writes: ‘The use of animation rather than live-action enhances Perfect Blue’s surrealistic elements. It is harder to tell how much of “what the camera shows” is real and how much is Mima’s imagination, or what someone is trying to convince Mima is her imagination—or whether the camera is showing both.’ In other words, since the audience is willing to accept animated figures onscreen as ‘real’ people, there is already a degree of suspension of disbelief occurring. With this in mind, it perhaps becomes a little easier for a director of animated films than for a director of live-action films to play with the filmic ‘reality’ he or she has created.
Anime / Animation 79
Synopsis
Whilst a young girl named Chihiro is moving to a new town with her family, her father decides to take a shortcut and the family stumble across what they assume is an abandoned theme park. Exploring the park, her parents seem drawn to a food stall and, with no one around, they begin to gorge themselves. Wandering off alone, Chihiro meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to flee the area before nightfall. However, when she tries to get away she discovers her parents have transformed into pigs and her escape is cut off. What they mistook as a theme park is in fact a small town built around a huge bath house and, as night falls, Chihiro finds that its patrons are a colourful array of spirits, monsters and gods. With the help of Haku, Chihiro hopes to save her parents and return to the real world, and that the only way for her to survive is to find inner strength she never knew she had.
Critique
The great charm of Miyazaki’s work is that he is able to create feel- ings of childlike fascination in audiences of any age and, as with the films of all great film-makers, watching them becomes an experience rather then just spectacle or entertainment. Spirited Away is widely considered to be his finest achievement precisely because it has a sense of magic that appeals universally. It is a strange yet enchanting film that often seems dreamlike, filled with moments of ambiguity, and the shifting pace of narrative flow can be a little disconcerting. After only a few minutes, Chihiro is abruptly transferred into a land of whimsy and, while the main body of the film relays a staggered series of unusual events over the course of just a couple of days, it leads to a strangely rushed anticlimactic dénouement. This complicated mode of narration is particularly unusual in a family film, but is effective in absorbing the audience in to the alternate reality of the films fantasy world.
Production work on the film is impeccable, with sound effects, voice dubbing and music fitting superbly. The animation in particular is of an unprecedented beauty and, like much of Miyazaki’s artwork, it has depth based on reality, as many of the characters, events and fictional landscapes are influenced by real-life observations of people, situa- tions and locations. Something as simple and obscure as the wallpa- per designs in Yubaba’s inner chambers, which Chihiro flies by in an early scene, are drawn with remarkable attention to detail that gives the fantasy an almost tangible quality. Miyazaki’s guiding influence over nearly all aspects of production is evident in the symbiosis that helps bring such an imaginative work as Spirited Away to life on the big screen.
Although it is somewhat lost amongst the beautifully-realized creations, and in the unusual telling of the story, the core of the nar- rative remains the theme of youth finding inner strength and suc- ceeding through hard work, a theme echoed in other Ghibli films, notably Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989). There is little introduction to the character of Chihiro before the magical situation develops, although