Spirited Away Review

The discipline here is remarkable given how strange the film looks. Chihiro's problem is solved by showing up, doing an unpleasant job well, remembering a name, and being kind to something frightening, and there is no antagonist to defeat, since even Yubaba operates by contract rather than malice. No-Face is not evil but a mirror for the bathhouse's greed, and the sequence where he vomits his way back down to smallness is one of the most unusual set pieces in mainstream animation.

The world runs on the logic of appetite and labour, and it is precise: the soot sprites haul coal, the stink spirit is a polluted river, the bathhouse has staff hierarchies and shift patterns. Ghibli's craft is at its most confident, with steam, water, and food animated so tangibly they became the film's most quoted images, and the train ride across the flooded plain simply stops the plot to let a mood settle. Hisaishi's piano theme does the rest without ever pushing.