Spirited Away: In search of innocence that will never be lost

Author: Leaf

Twenty years ago, the animated film Spirited Away was released in Japan. Since then, the film has won major awards including the Golden Bear award at the 52nd Berlin International Film Festival and the 75th Academy Awards.

At an anime festival in Paris in 2001, director Hayao Miyazaki once talked about the original intention of creating such an animation in an interview with reporters. In his mind, Chihiro is plain in appearance and not much in character, but he is convinced that after some adventures, such an ordinary little girl will be loved by many people. Miyazaki did not have a script in advance when he made the film, and for the character of Chihiro, there was no fixed image and human setting at the beginning. "Characters are born out of repetition, and repeated thinking makes characters."

A ten-year-old girl who accidentally fell into another world, wearing a green and white striped undershirt, wearing an ordinary ponytail, her childish face retains the child's curiosity about all things, and gradually has the willfulness and stubbornness of a young girl. She uses her own way to guard friendship, inspire tenacity beyond age in the face of difficulties, and show kindness to others, which makes people feel touched by her kindness and innocence, and reminds people of her fading childhood.

Seek and guard

The theme of Spirited Away is "Searching".

From the beginning of the search for his parents, trying to remember his deprived name, to finding the white dragon, and helping him remember who he really is, the film uses searching as a means to promote the storyline, but also conveys a metaphor: the real life is the process of finding his own heart bit by bit after experiencing various deprivations.

At the beginning of the film, the background music that accompanies the Chihiro family as they slowly enter the tunnel of the "Hidden World" is hisaishi's piano music. The notes flowing clearly like the jingle of spring water, there are simple and brisk and a hint of sadness in them. This is both in line with the mood of a girl who has just moved to a new environment, and it also indicates a fantasy encounter that she is about to experience.

Chihiro's parents are turned into pigs in the town of Kami-yō due to gluttony. For Chihiro, although the pigs are still wearing human clothes, the real parents cannot exist in the pig's body, so all she has to do is get the real them back. As a result, the little girl who was still sitting lazily in the back seat of the car at the beginning of the film, and some who did not listen to adults, has become a little different, and her growth has suddenly accelerated in order to find the most loved person in her life.

For Chihiro, "searching" in the hidden world also implies "guardianship". In order to find a way to change her parents back, she follows the guidance of the white dragon and allows herself to be hired by Grandma Tang in order to survive in the oil house. After signing a contract with Grandma Yu, she was stripped of her name, Chihiro Hagino, and became "Kochihiro". Although the green undershirt is replaced by a red work hunting suit, she cannot forget who she is, otherwise she will never be able to rescue her parents and return to her own world. This layer is the guardian, and only under the premise of guarding oneself can one protect one's family.

A ten-year-old girl rescued her parents on her own, and the process was not easy. But it is in this setting that Chihiro bravely becomes the oil house Xiaoqian who helps the river god clean, becomes a friend who walks into the faceless man's painful and confused heart, and becomes the best friend of The White Dragon who has long forgotten who he really is but still has good thoughts.

Entanglement and original intention

"Searching" is the logical main line of the story, and "pulling" is a hidden auxiliary line.

After being seriously injured and unconscious, the first thing Hakuryu said when he woke up was "Chihiro called me in his dream." Although he forgot who he was, he never forgot Chihiro's name. This kind of "remembering" is essentially a "tie" between people. In the later Makoto Shinkai's masterpiece "Your Name", this entanglement is more directly displayed, remembering your name, not only remembering each other's feelings, but also remembering your own way. In Miyazaki's story, hakuryu helps Chihiro remember himself, and Chihiro wakes up haku at the end, and the "bond" between them begins as early as chihiro's childhood when she fell into the Amber River. The red line of fate has not disappeared, but has only been temporarily forgotten.

Once Bai Long remembered his own life, his dignity and self-confidence as a river god returned, and he was no longer the housekeeper Xiao Bai who was willing to obey the manipulation of Tang Mother-in-law, nor did he any longer wronged himself to live a contradictory and unreal life. At the end of the film, he sends Chihiro, who wears back a green undershirt, to the junction of the hidden world and the human world. At this point, both Chihiro and Hakuryu have found their original intention and can truly continue their lives.

In an interview, Miyazaki said that Chihiro's character was based on Alice, a fairy girl named Lewis Carroll. The same ten-year-old girl, the same mundane and unremarkable, but it is this imperfection that makes the character universal. She attracts thousands of girls of the same age, teaches them to face the unknown in ordinary life, learns to get greater energy from their hearts, and at the same time, allows more girls and boys who have grown up to not forget their original intention of being born as a human being after experiencing the dust and deprivation of the years, and always maintain their innocence.

Compared with the noisy and complicated scenes of the oil house depicted in the middle of the film, the opening and closing scenes are extremely quiet. For example, in the section before the Chihiro family drove into the tunnel, Chihiro sat in the back of the car holding a farewell bouquet sent by her friend, and the scenery outside the window became more and more rural, and she showed frustration and dissatisfaction. At this time, Chihiro is like Alice reading with her sister under the tree, ignorant of how challenging the world she is about to enter is. This is exactly the mindset of all people before entering adolescence or later adult life.

Another example is chihiro's scene when he rides the Kaihara Tram. Through the big screen, Miyazaki translates his personal memories of riding the train alone as a teenager into Chihiro's story, arguing that the view outside the window when he first goes out alone on the tram is often forgotten because people are completely immersed in the journey itself. So, he painted the view outside the window as a flood, the railroad tracks were not in the clear water, and the tram was like driving on the sea. At this time, Chihiro still hadn't escaped the hidden world, but she had grown up, in Miyazaki's words, "At that time, she was full of energy and had already faced the whole world."

If Spirited Away is likened to a piece of music, it is made up of two styles of movement. One movement is a noisy adventure, the other is a quiet time. The former is fascinating, the latter is thought-provoking.

Miyazaki believes that the reason why people can understand a movie with a language barrier is because "nostalgia" is an emotion shared by people, "as long as you live, you will lose something, this is life." Film is the art of light and shadow, but also the art of nostalgia, and nostalgia always means seeking and protecting. In Chihiro's hidden world, what we can constantly find is our own innocence that will never be lost.

(The author is a doctor of foreign philosophy from Fudan University and an associate editor of Guangxi Normal University Press)

Source: Guangming Network - Literary And Art Review Channel