This Oscar-Winning Classic Was Voted The Best Animated Movie Of The 21st Century
The New York Times released a list of the best films released since 2000, and it's probably not a huge surprise that Bong Joon-ho's 2019 masterpiece (and 2020's best picture winner) "Parasite" took the top spot. The rest of the top 10 was, in my quite humble opinion, pretty great; David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" came in at number two, "There Will Be Blood" at number three, and exceptional films like "Get Out," "In the Mood for Love," and "The Social Network" rounded out the very top of the list. The ninth spot, though, belongs to the only animated movie in the top 10: "Spirited Away," the 2001 movie by animation master Hayao Miyazaki.
After calling the film a take on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" for a new generation and praising its wonderfully unique characters, the Times extolled the movie's virtues and intention, writing, "Beautifully uniting the master animator's preoccupations — man's corruption of nature, the loss of innocence, intimidating creatures who aren't what they seem — 'Spirited Away' is a spellbinding adventure with few peers in animation or elsewhere."
Actor John Turturro — who you might currently know from "Severance" and who also appeared in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which came in 76th place on the list — put "Spirited Away" on his own top 10 ballot, and the Times encouraged the creatives who weighed in on this list to explain their thought process. "It's a film for any child who's lost their parents in a department store or large crowd," Turturro wrote. "It's that pit in your stomach. It's one of my daughter's favorite films. There's a lot of things you have to watch when you're a parent, and it's really interesting to discover something with them at the same time." So, for anyone who needs a refresher, what is "Spirited Away" about?
What happens in Spirited Away?
Like many of Hayao Miyazaki's films — which he creates through his world-renowned animation house Studio Ghibli — "Spirited Away" is a stunning, melancholic, and deeply emotional journey focusing on a character who needs to access something within themselves in order to escape a perilous yet fantastical scenario. At the movie's start, Chihiro, a ten-year-old voiced by Rumi Hiiragi and Daveigh Chase, is frustrated as she and her parents travel through Japan to move to their new house, but everything turns upside down when they stop to investigate what appears to be an empty town. (Just to clarify, Miyazaki's films are always released in the original Japanese with subtitles and in dubbed English versions with impressive voice casts; I'll be crediting both vocal performers for each role whenever there are multiple actors.) Chihiro's parents gorge themselves on food that suddenly appears before them — and Chihiro does not — and before the young girl fully understands what's happening, her parents turn into pigs before her eyes.
After meeting a mysterious boy named Haku (Miyu Irino and Jason Marsden), Chihiro discovers that she can't go back to the car — as a river separating her from the vehicle has flooded — and as various spirits appear in the dusk, she's told to travel to a bathhouse and ask for a job with its mistress Yubaba (Mari Natsuki and Suzanne Pleshette). As it turns out, Yubaba is quite a dangerous figure ... but when an apparent monster called No-Face (Akio Nakamura) invades the bathhouse, Chihiro is the only one who can "tame" him, so to speak.
"Spirited Away," from its typically wonderful Studio Ghibli visuals to its unbelievably beautiful score written by Joe Hisaishi, is one of the best movies ever made without question ... and according to the New York Times, it's the best animated movie released since 2000. So did any other animated films make the list?
Only a few animated films ended up on the New York Times list, but they're all incredible
"Spirited Away" is, again, the only animated movie to crack the top 10 on this New York Times list, but Pixar ended up scoring a few spots on the list, too. "Ratatouille," the studio's 2007 film by Brad Bird about an idealistic rat named Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) who learns to become a master chef in Paris by allying himself with a high-end restaurant's garbage boy Alfredo Linguini (Lou Romano), earned the 73rd spot on the list. "Remy, a country rat with a sophisticated palate and a belief in himself, heads to the city to make his culinary dreams come true — setting off an enchanting, witty and touching adventure," the outlet writes. "Its lessons about reigniting our passions, even when they have long turned to drudgery, linger well after the feast."
Comedian Mike Birbiglia included "Up," the 2009 story of a widower voiced by Ed Asner who finds a new lease on life, on his ballot, and the film came in 50th place; the Times calls the film "Pixar at its risk-taking height." Finally, "WALL-E," which many (including me) would argue is Pixar at its absolute finest, earned the 34th spot on the list — Andrew Stanton's 2008 movie about a lovable, garbage-collecting robot on a broken and abandoned Earth relies heavily on its visual storytelling, presenting a touching and earnest story about discovering new life in the darkness.
Still, "Spirited Away" beat them all and is the only movie from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli to appear on the list at all. If you somehow haven't seen "Spirited Away," please remedy that; it's streaming on HBO Max.