The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 19 - ‘Spirited Away’

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1:03refresh your good vibes

1:16I'm Sean Fennessey I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is 25 for 25 a big picture special conversation show about spirited away we finally have an animated film on our list Amanda how are you feeling about that fact I feel great Jack, our producer, was like, I don't know what the argument against Spirit Away would be. And that's not the point of this series that we're doing. No arguments. There are no arguments. What a beautiful film. We've had some complicated conversations about animation on this show over the years. But recently, well, it means that Chris doesn't watch them. And you will watch them.

1:51But not with intensity. Yeah. I mean, it's not my preferred format. What would we call it? Style of filmmaking? Yeah, style of filmmaking. But I think it's pretty hard to argue with this as a visual masterpiece and as a way of telling a story that could only be told through animation. That's, I think, the biggest reason why. I'll spoil the fact that this is our only animated film on the list. You've been getting a little nervous about spoilers in the last few. Well, some things I want to share and some things I don't. So anybody who's earmarking a space for a film like WALL-E or a film like UP or The Incredibles, you know, like Coco out, you know, never even on the short list or the long list.

2:42I have a soft spot for Ratatouille, and I think there was a version of this list where I would have made a bid for it, but I would never have made it at the expense of a Hayao Miyazaki film. And Miyazaki's made a few movies in this century. If I had my druthers, I think my neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke would be my all-time Miyazaki picks, but those are films that predate the 21st century. Those, yeah, those are not eligible for this. I do think when we were putting the list together, my inclusion was any Miyazaki film that you want, but I assume it will be spiritual. That is what you wrote.

3:23And that is where we land. And that was where that was like the only animation slot that was available. Miyazaki one of the maybe at the top of the inarguable leaderboard of filmmakers along with like Spielberg and Coppola and a very short list of filmmakers for whom the industry has kind of rallied around him over the last 40 or so years since he's been making films somebody who is widely acknowledged to have pushed the style of filmmaking forward storytelling forward but also somebody who's heavily indebted to the 100 plus year history of cinema and even the hundreds of years history centuries history of storytelling and i think he's kind of an interesting person in the aftermath of our classics conversation because this movie is very indebted to the story the history of fairy tale um so spirited away is a film that came out in 2001 but not in america in japan came out in 2001 and was very quickly became the highest grossing movie in the history of japanese cinema it only recently i think in 2020 got knocked off by a demon slayer film which I know you saw in theaters during COVID.

4:28And this movie was an absolute phenomenon, which on the one hand, I think makes sense because it's arriving at that moment. You could probably compare it to sort of like the Jurassic Park moment in Steven Spielberg's career where it's like he's done this five or six times in a row now. There was a lot of anticipation for the film. The film is also hugely defined by its point of view on Japan at that time in history and its relationship to sort of like where it was in the 80s and 90s and what it was becoming in the 21st century. And it's also a movie that appeals widely to very young people all the way to very old people.

5:02It's a movie literally about life and death and everything in between those spaces. So this was a huge movie in Japan. And I think it's a fitting movie to add to our list because even though it is not the first film that was brought to America, Miyazaki film that was brought to America, is kind of the signature movie that was brought to America. you know John Lasseter who was working at Pixar at the time was a massive fan of Miyazaki and a friend Michael Eisner encouraged him hey maybe we should distribute this movie and they did they brought it over to America and made a good amount of money and it won the best animated feature at the Academy Awards and I think that not that win specifically but that conversion is makes it a nice tidy entry into our list because I think it without a movie like this I'm not sure if we get to the place where Parasite wins Best Picture, for example.

5:52You know, I see it as an interesting link in the chain of the globalization or internationalization of cinema in the United States. Because even though this movie was dubbed when it was released here, the storytelling style, the way that it looks, the names of the characters, this was an introduction to a lot of people at a very young age to Japanese storytelling. I was going to say the other part of it is really the generational aspect because I do think like Miyazaki films became so huge to kids about 10 to 15 years younger than us. Exactly. Hi Jack, you know, hi Bobby, hi everyone. Bobby Wagner, of course, yeah.

6:27Who were experiencing them at a very particular age and an age where many of the characters are, you know, their age as well. But so it opens up not just animation to them, but also world cinema. And even a little bit like, you know, being a film bro you know that you're like that you're going in like with a culty quality exactly yeah yeah and i mean that that persists miyazaki and the studio ghibli films i think exist in this unusual liminal space between disney and film bro cult like there is an entire amusement park dedicated to the world of studio ghibli there's all kinds of merchandise that you can buy and yet these are still sort of boutique films and they're not serialized in any way.

7:15They're inspired by stories, but they're not necessarily adaptations of stories. It's not Marvel or Aladdin and Aladdin 2 and then the live action Aladdin. There is something kind of contained about the individual movie experiences of them. And yet there is a stylistic thing about Miyazaki's hand-drawn animation and even the animation of the other filmmakers who work at Ghibli that does feel like it is part of like an industrialized machine, you know, even though it's humans that are making this work for the most part. Right. But it's like it is a house style that has become readily identifiable.

7:53And like, forgive me for bringing corporate terminology into this, but like a brand on its own. And there are people that like they are heavy into the merchandising, speaking of the Disney of it all. But it is like boutique or like art house merchandising for whatever reason. It's a funny, especially given the topic of most of the films. Yes. That they're straddling those worlds just so. Yeah. I mean, the why of this film on the list is pretty wide ranging. I do think that this happened after we determined that this movie would make the list. but the AI Studio Ghibli style that emerged just a few weeks ago.

8:33We're recording this in May of 2025. Was a reminder of how the co-optation, I think, of art into these machine-like systems persists, is relevant, is obviously a little bit gross and dangerous. The idea of like the office of the president using the Studio Ghibli AI transmitter to create versions of the stories that he wants to tell is kind of unfortunate and probably would make Miyazaki want to kill himself. But is also kind of an inevitability of the power of the work that he was making that it found its way across the world, across generations, all over the place. And I find that really fascinating because while I've always, you know, enjoyed Miyazaki films since the first ones I saw.

9:19I would imagine this is one of if this is probably the first one that I saw. I probably saw this in college, but not in a movie theater. But since I've been watching these movies, I don't mean this in a pejorative way at all, but these are weird movies. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know that you were getting more acquainted with them at the point. The Heron came out and Miyazaki had this kind of huge second wave in America and won another Oscar. And then Porco Rosso came into my house. And then Porco Rosso. So, you know, I like I live in the world and that is a far less weird movie than than this movie.

9:50Yes. Which is like fantastical. And like it's I think it's OK that it's weird. It is supposed to be like a strange and exciting fairy tale. And so all of the creatures and the things that the creatures do and the way that they. the way that the main characters make their decisions or interact in the world is like supposed to be a little unusual. You know, it has some like, you know, Grimm's fairytale. You know, those things are weird too. Like the imaginary world does not always have to be this, you know, Disney pink, like everything's happy things. You know, your imagination can get funky too.

10:33It's true. I think the film is really firmly rooted in a handful of other Disney classics. Alice in Wonderland, of course, and Lewis Carroll's writing is obviously a huge influence on this movie. Pinocchio. And the kind of transmogrification of children. The thin line between human and beast that movie really explores. Peter Pan, I think, is obviously also hugely important just in terms of kind of flying, the transporting to a Never Neverland kind of space. And also the sort of creatures that can communicate in ways that you would never expect them to in the human world. The one thing that separates, I think, those movies from this one in particular is this is a movie that even if it is not explicitly about death, it is very much about the space between life and death.

11:21Right. The spirit world. And that is very heady. And as the parent of a toddler, you know, we've had a couple of death conversations recently. Okay. And a movie like this kind of confronts you with some of those concepts because of the loss of parents early in the story. And we should say that this is a story about a young 10-year-old girl named Chihiro who is moving with her parents to a new home in a new town. She's left her school. She's left her friends. They're on a car trip at the beginning of the movie. They pass by this sort of collection of stones that represent past lives. And they're headed off to their new house.

11:54And on their way, her father takes a shortcut. and they go into this kind of backwoods area and they come upon an abandoned amusement park. But then strangely, at the abandoned amusement park, there's food. Right. Seems like food that has recently been prepared. And her parents, as representatives of the metaphorical, greedy, westernized... Her parents drive an Audi. Yes. Post-80s Japanese gorge themselves and transform into pigs. And when they transform into pigs, this world becomes a new world. It transforms into the spirit world. and Chihiro goes on a magical adventure. Right. That is sometimes gross, sometimes scary, sometimes beautiful, sometimes profound.

12:36Sometimes random. It's odd. I mean, I think it's very, very, I think that's sort of what I'm getting at. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That the rules don't follow any sort of basic real life logic. And you're like, oh, so that's how this is? Like, okay. Yeah, and that's also true. That's okay. Yeah, it's also true in other Miyazaki movies, but this one in particular I think feels like a head trip. It feels like someone is having a dream. You know what I mean? Yes. Where there's blank spots in the dream. There's blank spots in the logic of how the world works. And the more times that you watch it, the more you can kind of see what the connective tissue is for each storyline and what each character represents.

13:13And it can be understood as a deeply metaphorical movie. But Miyazaki has said this is a movie for 10-year-old girls. He wrote it for 10-year-old girls that he knew at a certain time in his life, that he was inspired by the manga books that those girls were reading and that he wanted to kind of transport some of his interest in fairy tale to those girls. But Chihiro is not like a typical girl character, I would say. Like, what do you make of her as a figure in this story? You know, I just want to hug her the whole time because as the parent of toddlers, you immediately put yourself into this. But she's, she is willful, but like, she was a little less, she was a little more scared and a little more uncertain than the like typical hardy like YA protagonist that would like we've been sold for the last 15 years.

14:06Like she is, she's, you know, vulnerable even at the same time as she is like really focused on getting her parents back and doing whatever tasks she needs to do and observing the world and making the connections. And but and like, I guess, sticking up for herself in the right moment. But there's a lot of like, I can't and I don't know how to do that. And what am I supposed to do? And this sense that this really is like a small kid who doesn't totally know how to function without her parents. Yeah, she kind of has some of the defiance and petulance that you'll find in a young girl. You know, like I really identify closely some of the stuff that she is doing, but also that sense of confusion and some frustration and being taken advantage of in certain experiences.

14:55and basically like learning what it's like in the real world, even while it's happening inside of a fantasy world. One of the things that distinguishes the movie is Miyazaki's animation style is widely claimed, but this movie, maybe more than any other, is like the pinnacle of what he does in terms of like color, things that are happening. I wanted to talk to you about this specifically. You have identified athletic filmmaking as like potentially a bit of a crutch for certain filmmakers. Right. They're being too showy. well they're like the camera is their toy and they're more interested in like what they can do with their toy and like where the camera can zoom and go than actually using it to create an image or to further a story in like a meaningful way like the the camera is the story right and animation is different in that respect obviously the camera can move and does move in animated features but in hand-drawn he he's more often focused on the frame on the still space and then everything that he can fit inside of it.

15:53So you can watch this movie a few times and see something different in every corner of every action. And this isn't essential to enjoying the movie, but when you think about the amount of work that goes into making a movie that feels that way, that is drawn by hand, this is like a huge achievement. Most animated movies that you watch in the pre - computer generated era, it's a flat surface. It's almost a 2D surface with characters moving inside of it. And this is one that feels like it is like background, foreground, life in every frame. Yeah. I mean, the thing about it, it's obviously a huge like technical like application of skill achievement.

16:36But like whatever. It is absolutely beautiful. Like that it is just straight up art, like the color especially. And but, you know, either the hand strokes or the brush strokes, the creatures, it is a feat of imagination. It is a feat of composition. It is a feat of just something that you want to look at. And because an animator, I guess, has like even more control over the frame, I guess you could then term it as like athletic filmmaking because he's like really showing off. But like, I don't care if you can do this. It's not showing off. It's just making something beautiful. Yeah, I think it is also useful in terms of pushing the story forward because it's kind of showing us whether it's like a literalization of the spirit world or just a literalization of everything that is in Chihiro's head where she can kind of like imagine what would be in a space like this.

17:29That this is a true story. My daughter woke up this morning and she came out of her bedroom and she said, Dad, I think I had a dream. And I said, what did you dream about? and she said i dreamed that you got me a present i was like i know this game i know what she's doing here and then i was like well what was the present yeah and then she started describing something uh-huh that is not possible not logical not real yeah you know it would be like it was an alligator but it was alive but it was friendly you know like that kind of thing and the movie is like a representation of that you know you see these creatures you see um the little soot bugs or you see the eight armed man or you see uh all of the various like frogs and walrus people and all the various creatures a turnip or a radish spirit it's a good question who hides her in the elevator turnip um i always get those confused as well he's whoever he is or or she i guess i shouldn't there's also a uh a critical figure in this movie which feels like the most childlike logic of all time that is a dashing young man but that is also a dragon yeah but that is also a river spirit yeah and the spirit of a river that has been um damaged in some way it's been uh toxified and it doesn't realize it's a river spirit anymore because of what we have done to this planet.

19:00Yeah. It's a pretty tangled metaphor. But it also is weirdly representative of how it feels to be a kid, I think. I think that's one of the things I like about the movie is that it's just unbound. It feels like, it feels unstuck on a lot of the things that we come to expect when we're watching a movie and we're like, why does this not connect to this? And why does that not connect to that? And in some ways, I think that can be frustrating for some viewers. But for the most part, I think if you turn yourself over to it, it can be very beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, but there's something, it doesn't insist upon its own logic also.

19:34It gives into that fantastical quality. And there is something that is like much like a child, like the movie or Miyazaki, you know, whoever really believes that what you're seeing is the way that it is. And this is just like, this is what's going on. And so you find yourself more willing just to kind of be like, I'm in this dream world and I'm going with it. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. There's no smugness. There's no irony. No characters turn and look at the camera and wink. The other thing is that even though this film and all of his films are very influential on the Pixar storytelling style, this isn't a kids movie made for adults.

20:16And it isn't a kids movie made for kids. It's like a movie that Miyazaki made for himself. that is somehow universally understood, which is, I think, actually the way that we tend to locate our favorite hauteurs, our favorite filmmakers, the people that are important to us on the show, are kind of like, this person made this because it mattered to their soul, not because they were like, I have to meet the expectations of what the Disney board wants in Q4. And we'll be able to sell this little widget guy. Exactly. Or also, this is what I think of 10-year-olds or 8-year-olds. Yes, exactly. what makes them laugh versus what makes me feel something.

20:54And like, you and I know that kids also actually, they know when they're being talked down to and they actually respond much more to just someone's expression of what they want to say. I don't know if brave is not the right word, but it's cool that Miyazaki is so committed. I mean, he's famously like a very curmudgeon and sort of like very difficult and very like, I have my idea and we're sticking to my idea. Well, you can tell that too, right? It's singular. It's just like you are in someone's very, very specific and playful and soulful and strange in a great way, specific brain. And it can only, if it were, you know, farmed out to a lot of different people, you would feel it.

21:40There is something about the one person's journey of it that makes it work. It's funny because pre The Boy and the Heron, he hadn't made a movie for a very long time. And during that time, I think his cult grew pretty significantly. I mean, you know, I think the episode we did around Boy and the Heron was Bobby, Andy, and Charles. And that's really like, you know, different age experiences, different life experiences, people from different parts of the country. And they all had really, really strong feelings about his films. but I think that we had forgotten a little bit like how dug in he is on his strong point of view until we saw The Boy and the Heron because a lot of people who saw it it's a wonderful movie it's not one of my favorites of his but it's kind of aggressively him he wasn't trying to satisfy his audience or he hadn't like softened in his old age he was like I'm going to make the teeth on this heron disgusting and you're going to be forced to look at it for 35 minutes And this movie has the same thing where there's like a sludge monster and no face is kind of vomiting up living creatures.

22:47Like there's something quite, quite gnarly, quite gross about his vision of a child's mind or these fantastical worlds that he builds, which is great. Like you don't, there's no, I've now watched every Disney animated feature ever made with my daughter. It never really goes there. It never really goes there. We talk a lot about how, and now we just sound like two really old parents. So, you know, put us on the glacier. But back in our day, you know, you walked uphill both ways and they did make kids entertainment that was like slightly gnarlier. It was never this. Well, sometimes it was this gnarly in its own way, like not this particular favorite because only Miyazaki is Miyazaki.

23:27But again, the kids know when they are being condescended to. And it like flattens. Like the world is wild and children need art to help them understand it as much as we do. I totally agree. I find Lasseter to be an interesting character in this story in part because I never really feel as much Miyazaki specifically in his movies. Like in Cars, I don't really feel Miyazaki. Maybe a little bit in terms of the kind of generation, the generation gaps, which is a big theme as well in Miyazaki movies. But if you look at some of the later Pixar movies, you know, certainly that some of the soulful stuff in Up, some of the soulful stuff in Ratatouille and WALL-E.

24:05But even more specifically in Soul and in Turning Red, those are the movies that are these like existential crisis films. Right. One about a 13-year-old girl, one about a much older guy. but they're explorations of something deep and they're trying to use like basically a child's format to convey something really powerful they're not quite on this level but you know you know what i'm trying to say no i do i mean i think but they are a little bit stuck in that is this a movie for kids is this a movie for adults you know they and and some of that is just because in 2022 or whatever you have uh you have to satisfy 18 different audiences and and corporate boards.

24:48But they're definitely influenced by it. I mean, Domi Shi, the director of Turning Red, was like, this is my favorite film or one of my favorite films of all time. So, I mean, and that's another thing where, like we said, all of the kids, all of the young people who are into movies grew up on Spirited Away and then all the rest of the Miyazaki films. So the influence of this movie is not just in like the other animated films, but in how all the young people watch movies. It's very true. And that idea of the perfect movie is one that we haven't brooked too much so far in our conversations. Came up during Children of Men.

25:26That was probably the last time we were like, God damn. Yeah. This is really tight. You know, there's not a lot to quibble with. There's favorite and then there's like mastery, right? Right. And we've got a lot of favorites on this list. We've got a lot of masters. Melancholy is perfect. I'm not making any critical judgments in this conversation specifically about other films. And I think Keanu Reeves in Something's Gotta Give is a well-developed and perfect character. I'm not litigating anything with you, I promise. We stand together on this list. However, I'm interested in the idea of the perfect movie, of the way that people will identify something and say, this is magnificent.

26:02Because I don't know, what is the imperfect version of Spirited Away? What's the version that fails? I think it's singular. and that's probably like the more appropriate way to define the fawning admiration for it is that there's just nothing like you know steven spielberg very famously said i think this is better than any disney movie ever made and that's high praise yeah somebody who understands what it's like to reach for a perfect movie and i find that interesting that it has gotten to this place in this 25 year period it may have gotten to this place more than almost any movie on our list can you think of another movie that's even coming that you think would be defined in that way well for us yes i can think of a couple on the list think of the think of the unknowable universal canon i can think of a couple on our list yeah i can think of a couple that we purposefully excluded well sure that would be deemed as such that's fine but once you're asking me to speak for the people you know that becomes dangerous uh complicated uh i'm trying i mean it is so generational.

27:06Yeah. You know, there are some movies that we think are perfect and the younger kids are like, what are you doing? You know. Like The Princess Diaries. Sure. It's a great, great film. Sure. Princess Diaries 2 is very early in Chris Pine's career. We wouldn't have him without it. I haven't seen it. So. How does it stack up to Spirited Away? They do have to go to a fictional place and then learn its rules and regulations. Okay. Or is everyone there dead? Um, well, it's really dead on the outside, dead on the inside. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. No, no parents have been turned into pigs in that film.

27:43I actually don't know what happens to Anne Hathaway's parents in, well, I guess her mom's in the first one. I don't know whether she makes the trip to Genovia. I don't remember that. Her grandmother is, uh, is Julie Andrews. Jack, am I right? No idea. Oh, come on. Does Genovia border Sokovia in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Okay. Good to know. Uh. this film, part of what is amusing to me about some of that merchandising and the iconography of the movie is what is being common iconography. And also the memeing of this movie. You know, which is, re-watching it, I was like, oh, that still, and that still, and that still, and that still.

28:20You know, there's the famous Chihiro and no face on the subway boat that's like them sitting together. That's it. That's the one. I didn't even know that was the image. But that image of the sort of like, Yeah. Me and my, my next fandom, you know, sitting together on the train, which is funny because, you know, this character is complex and mysterious and indebted to like 1960s horror spirits in, in Shinoda films. Like it's, it's very unusual kind of figures for them to have been like subsumed into our internet life, but they very much have been. And to me, they're not the same. Like in my neighbor Totoro, there's a a lightheartedness to the imagery to cat bus right this movie is much more severe yeah has Alice seen this one yet?

29:10no she's never I just feel like it's too soon yeah I think it's way too early and I think it's instructive that Miyazaki says that I made it for 10 year olds and I'm sure if you were 7, 8, and 9 you could watch a movie like this but it's not for toddlers you know it's not Ponyo it's not even Porco Rosso which is like hey that pig is flying a plane like any kid can kind of like lock into that well and just also the plane Right. Yes. I mean, this does have river craft of a kind. It's got flying dragons. Sure. It does have things kids like. Yeah. But it has so many things that I think would be confusing to extremely young kids.