Blog #7

“Like Alice in Wonderland who falls through a rabbit hole into a strange realm, or Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz who follows the yellow brick road…”

- This is a real puzzle solver in a sense. If you watch this, you’re sort of in confusion as to what’s going on. As I was watching this I just couldn’t put two and two together so that I could understand what was going on. And then I come across this quote and the idea used in class that this is sort of a Alice in Wonderland sort of film. Once I heard that it was sort of a mind cleanse. I know that may sound weird but after reading that it kind of answered all of my questions that I had prior to watching the film.

“Being true to the Shinto insight that all phenomena often become polluted and are in need of cleansing and purification in order to manifest their vitality, Miyazaki has this strange array of creatures come to the bathhouse to be restored to their original freshness.”

- You sort of notice this when that big mud monster thing comes into the bath house. Everyone saw him as this mean thing that destroyed everything in his path but in reality he just had a lot of gunk built up inside of him wanted to be “Cleansed”. All of those creatures that go to that bathhouse are just looking to be cleansed.

“At the climax of the film Chihiro remembers an incident when she lost a pink shoe in a river and almost drowned trying to retrieve it, but was carried by the water's current to the safety of the shore.”

- This has to be one of the best parts in the movie. All movie it kind of stuck in the back of my mind that Haku hadn’t known his real name. So when she talks about how she found it, it was sort of out of the blue. Plus her explanation at first didn’t make much sense because how could haku be a river. But when you realize the kind of money you are watching and who the director is you start to rethink her explanation and when you see that the Japanese culture is so known for their spirits and things of that sort, that her explanation makes complete sense.