Little girl lost

By Noel Vera

(Note: plot of film discussed in close detail)

Hayao Miyazaki's " Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi" (Spirited Away,
2001), about the adventures of an ordinary girl named Chihiro lost
in a strange world where her parents have been turned into pigs, has
been called everything from an anime variation on Charles
Dodgson's "Alice" books to a fantasy treatise on parent-child
relations in modern Japan to (as Miyazaki himself put it in an
interview) a parable on the empowerment and maturity of ten-year-old
girls.

It's unusual in that it's the most openly dreamlike of Miyazaki's
films. He's depicted dreams before--Nausicaa's reverie about a
child Ohmu, for example, or Porco Rosso's vision of dead pilots come
to life--but never so sustained, never for almost the length of a
film. His ultrarealistic style of animation--the characters don't
go into exaggerated cartoon expressions, or deliver asides to the
audience as in conventional anime (in this he more closely resembles
Disney, as opposed to Warner Brothers or the Fleischer brothers)--
suits the dreamlike images just fine. I've always argued that to
achieve true strangeness you need a solid base of everyday realism
to take off from, for contrast and comparison; "Spirited Away" is
eloquent proof of this. The sequence where the sky darkens and
spirits begin to appear wouldn't be as frightening if we didn't have
Chihiro's car ride (with her in the back seat wearing a bored
expression and her pair of comically dense parents chattering away
in front) to establish the reality of the world that had suddenly
just vanished. The impossible landscape--the endless shallow blue
sea with its sunken rail line, the garden-topped plateau surrounded
by plummeting cliffs--wouldn't be as impossible if Chihiro (her name
by this time taken away and replaced with the nickname "Sen") didn't
spend quiet moments at her porch looking at it. That the sunken
rails and precipitous cliffs don't disappear like mirages the longer
Sen stares at them--that rail and cliff seem as solid as any rail
and cliff in the ordinary world--only adds to their mystery.

But more than giving us contrasting images to see, Miyazaki gives us
contrasting emotions to feel; against a wonderful and at times
frightening background he gives us a core drama, the resolution of
which, thanks to his storytelling and powers of characterization, we
deeply care about. Dodgson's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
and "Through the Looking Glass" brimmed over with fantastical
creatures and surreal images, but at the center of the books were
the reactions and opinions (sometimes frightened, sometimes short-
tempered, not always very perceptive) of the young (and true-to-
life) Alice Pleasance Liddell. Same with "Spirited Away:" the train
gliding over water, the repulsive mud creature, the parents turned
dumb and bestial, none of this would have the same impact if there
wasn't a very real little girl in the middle of it all, expressing
wonderment and disgust and loss accordingly.

"Spirited Away" speaks to anyone who as a child--or at any time of
his life--found himself lost and wandering in an unfamiliar world;
that's possibly the secret of its wide appeal, its commercial and
critical success (boxoffice hit in Japan; a shared Golden Bear in
Berlin; an Academy Award for Best Animated Film at the Oscars).
It's possible, however, that the film speaks to the few Filipinos
who have seen it (more, hopefully, if ever the DVD becomes available
in Manila) in a special way.

Filipino overseas contract workers ("OCWs," as they are known in
Manila) are men and women contracted to go abroad and work for a
period of time, usually for two or three years, with the option to
renew their contract. Like Sen they find themselves in an
unfamiliar land (Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Italy,
Japan, to name a few) amongst unfamiliar people speaking an unknown
language (Malay, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, Japanese); they often
feel lost, disoriented, depressed, wishing they were back home with
family and friends.

Filipino workers often take on the menial jobs natives find too low-
paying, or too degrading, to take: cooking, waitressing, taking care
of children, cleaning up floors and bathrooms; driving, heavy labor,
signing on as sailors. More, they're looked upon much the same way
as Sen was by the bathing-house's staff near the film's beginning:
as being small, puny, useless, possibly malodorous, definitely not
to be trusted.

Filipino workers have little choice but to respond much the same way
Sen does: by bending down to their work without protest. The scene
where the spiderlike Kamaji warns Sen not to complain or ask to be
sent back is almost an emblematic moment: it's as if he was speaking
to the thousands of Filipinos desperate to find work, warning them
to seal their mouths even at the cost of starvation, possible
physical or sexual abuse, perhaps a violent death.

Why do they do it? Sen's motive parallels theirs. Sen works to
avoid being sent home or turned into an animal while she finds a way
to transform her parents back to human form. Filipino workers also
work for the sake of their families, trying to earn enough money to
send home.

And somehow, they prevail. They learn the language, grow familiar
with foreign customs, sometimes even marry and raise children. They
lay down roots and thrive on the alien soil. Like Sen they manage
to win the respect and affection of their fellow workers, mainly
through hard work, willingness to endure, a cheerful and likeable
nature even in the face of adversity. When Sen is cheered on by her
fellow workers, again the moment seemed emblematic: Filipinos often
inspire that kind of camaraderie, even among foreigners, given
proximity and sufficient time.

I remember asking myself: "Does Miyazaki know any Filipinos?" The
question seems laughably farfetched, though you must remember that
there are thousands of Filipinos in Japan, many of them there
illegally, working under-the-table with the unspoken permission of
Japanese immigration (for an excellent account of their experiences,
read Ray Ventura's autobiographical "Underground in Japan"). Could
he or perhaps someone in his staff be at least familiar with their
situation, with their plight? We may never know. Perhaps the
easiest answer would be the earlier one: that Miyazaki has made a
movie with such simultaneously special and basic appeal that it
touches many people in many different ways. Which, to be honest, is
no answer at all, but will have to suffice for the meantime.

("Spirited Away" is available on DVD)

(This article first appeared in Menzone, July, 2003)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)