English Dolby Digital 5.1, Japanese Digital Stereo, French
Digital Stereo
Subtitles:
Closed-captioned
Extras:
Spirited
Away Introduction by John Lasseter, The Art of Spirited Away,
The Nippon Television Special - The Making of the Film, Select
Storyboard to Scene Comparison, Behind the Microphone with
Suzanne Pleshette and Jason Marsden, Original Japanese Trailers
In Japan, animated movies are not
created with the same purpose as animated movies here in North
America. Most animated material found in North America is directed at
children. Now granted, movies such as Heavy Metal in the States are
adult-driven fair but for the Japanese, animation is just another
medium by which a story can be told, be it for an adult or a child or
in most instances both. Now maybe this has to do with the level by
which comics and animation is ingrained within the Japanese culture,
probably even more so than sushi or Sony. And within the realm of
Anime (as cartoons are called in Japan), Hayao Miyazaki is the
equivalent of Steven Spielberg. Actually within the realm of Japanese
movies in general he's very highly thought of.
Maybe it's because of this acceptance of animation as a mainstream
medium; Japanese filmmakers are not bound to the conventions of the
cartoon as a child's medium. Whereas Monsters, Inc. and Spirited Away
both dealt with the issue of growing up to some degree, Monsters
seemed to focus more on the quality of the animation as well as set
gags to drive the story. Spirited Away, while it is primarily a
children's film, never plays like that; instead it uses the story and
the characters to drive the story. The result makes it more of a movie
than a cartoon like Monsters. What animation affords is the ability to
break pretty much all the bounds of reality as we know it and create a
world that when looked at critically, may be unrealistic, but works
nonetheless. It works because it helps create a feeling of nostalgia,
of innocent times when running through the grass might have meant
flying through the clouds. When just accepting something just because
it was.
On to the DVD, even though the movie won a much-deserved Oscar for
best animation, having already reviewed the movie itself when it was
first released in theaters (here),
I find no need to do another one. I would just be regurgitating the
same praise all over again, although DVD does allow one to watch the
movie in both the dubbed and subtitled version. I will add that on the
smaller screen, the movie allows for a more intimate look that a large
screen often masks. And with the slow mystical nature of the story, a
more intimate view allows for a greater appreciation of the subtleties
within the movie.
Instead I will focus on the extras that are so often included into all
DVD sets these days. To be honest, I often don't watch these. Trailers
and games just don't interest me that much, though I have watched a
few documentaries that add insight into a film. Now with most DVDs,
especially ones directed towards children, they often include many
distractions to keep the little tykes busy for a few hours. I'm sure
this is worth the price of the disc itself for most parents. Spirited
Away doesn't include any such distractions. Nor should it, to be
honest. It's not that type of children's film.
In this, and this only, I would have to give the kudos to the Disney
people who released this film in North America. At least they didn't
try and commercialize the work by throwing in too many useless
distractions. The problem actually lies in reverse. They didn't
actually add anything of significance at all. It felt like they put
very little energy in putting out a product that truly reflected the
work of Miyazaki or the movie in general. They never tried to take the
movie to the next level.
While there was one very good documentary that showed Miyazaki's team
and the effort they put to release the product, this was a documentary
made by a Japanese station and was geared more towards the Japanese
audience than the Western one. The only thing that Disney contributed
was a very short piece on the effort they went through to dub the
movie. And while the dubbing was good, this provided little insight
into the movie and seemed more like a 'look at me' marketing piece for
their dubbing team.
Disney had the opportunity to truly advance the medium by showing that
animation could be used to tell a story directed not only to children
but adults as well. That animation allowed for so much more than what
people were used to here in the west. They could have shown how this
movie could be appreciated from an American audience. They could have,
they should have, they didn't.
Now hopefully they'll put out a special edition that examines the film
itself, and affords it the effort and handling it deserves, something
on par with the excellent releases of the Criterion Collection. I'm
just not holding my breath.
