When I am older, I will look back on this decade as the time when I truly fell in love with the movies; when I started taking an active interest in all the films out there around me, seeking out classic black-&-white films and foreign films, and starting my path down the career of a filmmaker. No other decade can possibly hold as much significance to me as this one, because this was the decade of my youth.
So then why do I pick Hayao Miyazaki’s incredible Spirited Away as my number one movie of the decade? Personally, I can’t think of anything better. Miyazaki is one of the best filmmakers living today, and his body of work boasts some of the finest pieces of storytelling I can think of. Just this decade he has turned out three sublime movies, the other two being Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and Ponyo (2008). He creates entire worlds that are wholly original, and his animations boast some of the most creative inspirations I have ever seen.
Spirited Away concerns the young girl Chihiro, who is moving with her parents to a new town. They take a detour and end up at what they assume is an abandoned theme park. The parents eat forbidden food and are turned into pigs, and Chihiro discovers the “theme park” is actually a bathhouse for spirits. She seeks employment from the witch who runs the place, Yubaba, and with the help of her new friends, Haku and Lin, she seeks a way to escape and get her parents back.
That summary comprises maybe the first forty minutes of the movie, and the rest is a spectacular delight, as Chihiro encounters river spirits, toads, a monster named No-Face, and an eight-armed man who operates the boiler room. Miyazaki has a deft touch that creates these characters and this world so firmly that you believe in them completely and are spirited away, so to speak, into this world.
This may not by Miyazaki’s best work in his filmography, and some may contend not his best film of the decade. But this film was my induction into the Miyazaki film world, and I cannot begin to describe the excitement I felt as I watched the movie for the first time; it is one of the few times I checked my brain at the door, not because it was juvenile, but because everything about it ensnared me and I just wanted to stay in this world forever. People often describe Star Wars (the original) as making them feel like a kid again, and I can say that is definitely true about this film. I would wager it is probably the film this decade I have seen the most times, because whenever I find out someone hasn’t seen it, I eagerly force them to watch it. Indeed, I watched this movie twice in one week the first time I saw it.
I think the reason I connect with the film so much is because it reminds me that in the world there are still people brimming with ideas and imagination, who are not afraid to express themselves fully, and in a wholly original way. It also proves that animation is not for children, a stigma that has been perpetuated by Disney films. Pixar films have tried to break that mold, but the general population still regards them as children’s fare. It is a sad reality, but hopefully animation can move away from this stigma and will be taken seriously as a real art form, worthy of comparison to the great movies of yore and present.
And so to this decade, I bid thee adieu. There are several thousand films I did not get a chance to see in time for this list, and I made this list without completely seeing some definite must sees. I was going to do this midway through next year, but by then who would really give a shit? Undoubtedly movies and rankings would be different if I did this list in six months, but I feel it is an accurate representation of my feelings now. I said I would modify it if I ended up seeing something genius, but that seems unnecessary now. This decade is over, and it is time to welcome in the new decade with open arms. 2010, here we come.
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