Spirited Away (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki
Japan

upset i took so long to watch this film. i love it so much and i don't even know why. it's a fantasy story so there's all the elements that just don't make sense, but on the other hand there was something so compelling and endearing about it all. i'm not sure i've ever condoned love stories in fantasy movies very much, but for some reason i became a pedophile and was okay with a past-life love story between two ten year olds??? that's the kind of movie it is, you go with whatever and you feel so much for what that whatever is. and it's so brilliantly imaginative, a bathhouse for spirits, her parents turned into pigs... animation wise i mean everything is really visually quite amazing for just a typical 2d anime framework

and chihiro as a character... i know this is a children's movie, but chihiro must be one of my favourite characters of all time now.

Miyazaki did not want to make the hero a "pretty girl." At the beginning, he was frustrated at how she looked "dull" and thought, "She isn't cute. Isn't there something we can do?" As the film neared the end, however, he was relieved to feel "she will be a charming woman." - Hayao Miyazaki

I think this is exactly what I love about her, down to the clothes she's wearing, how she was a grumpy kid at the beginning, to her strength and maturity when she has to leave the bathhouse and not look back. i read a review that said the film had a 'dream-like logic', with which i completely agree. things do not always make sense to you but in the greater scheme of things they seem fitting and appropriate, which i find is quite an impossible thing to achieve given the enormity of choices he had at his disposal i.e. anything fantastical at all.

5/5 i loved this movie, not to mention the eargasm that is the soundtrack. asian films always surprise me