Spirited Away (2002) Script Review | #67 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
Hayao Miyazaki crafts a breathtaking fantasy story for all ages.
Logline: During her family’s move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches and spirits, where humans are changed into beasts, and must survive long enough to win back her freedom and rescue her parents.
Written by: Hayao Miyazaki
Pages: N/A
SCRIPT UNAVAILABLE!
Personally, I think it’s a shame that filmmaking maestro Hayao Miyazaki has only one entry on the WGA’s 101 Greatest Screenplay List1, until I remembered that most of his best-known works came out pre-2000. Still, seeing Spirited Away included here should console both Miyazaki fans and delight screenwriters, for it is far and away one of the best stories written… which makes it a shame that no screenplay exists to read it.
That’s because Miyazaki does not write screenplays in the traditional sense; rather, he works out the story by sketching and storyboarding it, developing the narrative as he goes along. Instead of having a screenplay to read and learn from, let us look at the finished product and try to learn what we can from that.
The story of a young pre-teen girl who gets swept into a fantasy world could describe a number of classical novels; in that vein, Spirited Away and its heroine, 10-year-old Chihiro, join a pantheon of other such famous luminaries, including Alice (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Dorothy Gale (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Lucy Peverell (The Chronicles of Narnia), and Coraline Jones (Coraline). It is also that rare kind of children’s story— one that does not shy away from grown-up themes and will equally appeal to adults as it does to kids.
The principal characters in Spirited Away include:
Chihiro Ogino/Sen
Haku/Spirit of the Kohaku River
Yubaba
Lin
Kamaji
Zeniba
Boh (Baby)
No Face
Akio and Yūko Ogino (Chihiro’s parents)
It starts when Chihiro and her parents move to a new town and take a wrong turn through the woods. They end up outside a tunnel that leads to an abandoned station. The abandoned station opens up to an abandoned theme park. But despite seemingly deserted, the Oginos find an empty stall filled with plates piled with steaming delicacies. While Akio and Yūko dig into the food, Chihiro wanders to the main building and encounters Haku, who tries to get her to leave before the sun sets. But it’s too late— Chihiro’s parents have been turned into giant pigs for their greed, the path back to the tunnel has been flooded, and the spirits have begun their pilgrimage to the park that suddenly bustles with life. Chihiro, the only human left, is stranded.
But Haku, the sorcerer’s apprentice, takes pity on her and helps her. He warns her to get a job or else his boss, Yubaba, will turn her into a pig, too. He sends her to someone he knows can help her, the one working in the boiler room: Kamaji. Why does Haku help Chihiro? For one, it seems that they have met before, a long time ago. Two, Haku isn’t above compassion despite his nature of work.
Although Miyazaki’s stories do not fall into tidy categorizations or follow a precise formula, the arc of Spirited Away does track with the structure of a screenplay:
Act 1
Setup
Chihiro and her parents move to a new town but upon taking a wrong turn, they end up in the abandoned theme park where they find food
Inciting Incident
Haku, sighting Chihiro, tries to get the girl to leave but Chihiro ends up stranded, and must evade the spirits with Haku’s help so he sends her to meet Kamaji in the boiler room
Plot Point 1
Although Kamaji doesn’t give Chihiro a job, he convinces Lin to take the girl to Yubaba, and manages to secure a job in the bathhouse but at the price of giving away her name
Act 2
Rising Action
Under Lin’s mentoring, Chihiro is faced with her first big task on her very first night: To clean a polluted river spirit that nobody else wants to touch; she also accidentally invites a No-Face spirit into the bathhouse
Midpoint
Chihiro is rewarded with a herbal cake from the River Spirit, and wins the respect of Yubaba and the other staff; No Face begins to prey on the bathhouse staff’s greed and grows bigger
Plot Point 2
When she spots Haku (in dragon form) under attack, Chihiro races to save him but is badly hurt after stealing a seal from Yubaba’s sister, Zeniba; No Face creates pandemonium in the bathhouse and Chihiro is forced to deal with that in the process
Act 3
Build Up
Chihiro sets off to Swamp Bottom, accompanied by Yubaba’s baby Boh (transformed into a hamster-like creature) and No Face, to ask Zeniba for forgiveness on Haku’s behalf; Haku, recovering from his ordeal, makes a deal with Yubaba to bring back Boh in exchange for Chihiro’s and her parents’ freedom
Climax
Zeniba forgives Haku, keeps No Face with her; Chihiro frees Haku from Yubaba’s spell when she remembers his real name, and succeeds in passing Yubaba’s test, winning her freedom and that of her parents
Finale
Chihiro and Haku part ways, and Chihiro is reunited with her parents who have returned to human form but cannot remember their ordeal.
I have truncated and shortened a great deal of detail and imagery that fills out this structure, the kind of imagination that makes a Studio Ghibli picture so wonderful. Note, too, that the second Act does have Three Tasks for Chihiro to complete but it is not formulaic AND the third task only concludes at the Climax.
1st Task: Clean the River Spirit
2nd Task: Deal with No Face
3rd Task: Rescue Haku and her parents
The characters benefit the most from Miyazaki’s storytelling sensibilities; for they do not fit neatly into labels. Take Yubaba. She is ostensibly the story’s antagonist, yet despite her cold and callous nature, she is also capable of loving someone beyond herself: the giant Baby, Boh. To be sure, she fusses over him and doesn’t let him venture outside; but her fear and anger over his disappearance is a genuine reaction that taps into every parent’s fear of a missing child. Nor is she above congratulating Chihiro on succeeding at the River Spirit task (though she is the one who assigned the girl to set her up for failure). The result is a flawed character but one whose only comeuppance is to lose her hold over Chihiro and her parents. A variation of this story would have either had a reconciliation (melodramatic) or one of the other characters taking over her position to usher in a new style of management (boring and predictable).
There’s also the love story between Chihiro and Haku. It’s not a romantic kind of love; rather, it’s the kind of caring that flares up between two people who care for each other. Their parting, and his instruction not to look back until she exists the tunnel, has echoes of Orpheus and Eurydice.
And then there’s Chihiro herself. Like most 10-year-olds, she’s insufferable; Yubaba even calls her out as spoiled and a cry-baby. Making your protagonist unlikable is one thing; making your protagonist unlikable AND a child is tricky— would an American feature film dare to do the same? (Coraline is the rare exception, and it originated as a British story). But Chihiro’s bravery and courage wins us over, enough to change her and mature as a person.
Miyazaki came up with the idea for Spirited Away when he wanted to make a film for the five young girls who’d accompany his family whenever they went on vacation to a mountain cabin. Chihiro was based on the daughter of the film’s associate producer, Seiji Okuda. For the story, Miyazaki drew on Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore, as well as environmental concerns and the erosion of cultural heritage plus consumer greed. I don’t think Miyazaki said he wanted to write a story precisely about those themes but that’s what emerges from the end result, creating a rich world to study.
Spirited Away succeeds for many reasons, and one of them is because it does not pander to children. The best kinds of children’s stories deal with fear, loss, grief, death, anger, evil, sadness, and more. But it does it in such a way that children, by way of the protagonist, get to experience these issues and face challenges in a safe way while helping to broaden their minds. It’s the original Virtual Reality simulation! The best stories say, yes the world is scary for a child, here’s how you can overcome it. And along these lines, it cannot help but sweep up the adults too in its river of imagination. Spirited Away is a titanic achievement in animation and storytelling; it is a beautiful tale of fantasy, and another jewel that Hayao Miyazaki has gifted the world!
Although who knows, The Boy and the Heron might earn a place in an updated version of this list.