What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 2002

The Year: 2002
What the Nominees Were: Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Pianist
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: Spike Jonze’s meta-mindbender Adaptation, Haynes’ mediation on melodrama Far From Heaven, and Spirited Away.

What Did Win: Chicago
How It’s Aged: It’s good. It can never quite decide if it wants to be a full adaptation with period sets and costumes, or just a filmed staging of the musical with modern sets and costumes, but Zellweger and Zeta Jones both give excellent full-tilt performances.

What Should’ve Won: Spirited Away (the American dub) (the Japanese version was released in 2001, but I’m trying to recognize movies on the year they were eligible for the American Oscars, and this movie’s American dub won an Oscar for 2002, so that’s the cut I’m recognizing.)

How Hard Was the Decision: The Pianist was eliminated due to problematicalness, which left Adaptation, Far From Heaven, and Spirited Away. In the end, I decided that the Parasite Rule must prevail and I had to choose the animated classic. (Odd that all three times I’ve used the rule it’s been for Japanese films. I don’t think of myself as a Japanophile, but that’s just the way it’s sorted itself out.)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Writer: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: The late Daveigh Chase, who is wonderful; Jason Marsden; Suzanne Pleshette; David Ogden Stiers

The Story: Chihiro and her parents are en route to a new home when they get lured into an abandoned amusement park with food that turns the parents into pigs. Chihiro must take a job at a bath house for spirits in order to win their freedom.

Any Nominations or Wins: It won Best Animated Feature, which was its only nomination.
Why It Didn’t Win: Miyazaki always had some American filmmaking fans, but it wasn’t until after he (semi-)retired that he was finally recognized as one of the all-time greats. There has still never been an animated Best Picture winner, much less a foreign one, so it’s a stretch to say this could have won, but it’s been universally recognized in the years since as one of the best films ever made, so I’m giving the people of 2002 the ability to spot that.

 
Why It Should Have Won:

1. This is one of many masterpieces made by Miyazaki (I’ve been failing to point out that his other films should have been considered) but this one merges the best elements of his other films: It combines the bountiful visual imagination of Castle in the Sky and satisfyingly complex mythology of Howl’s Moving Castle, with the good-natured gentleness of My Neighbor Totoro. This is the ultimate expression of his life’s work.
   
2. For its dramatic engine, the film revisits a topic from another early Miyazaki film, Kiki’s Delivery Service: the first job. But whereas that one was about (what would come to be called) the gig economy, this one is about starting out in a minimum wage job under one roof, and it perfectly captures the ups and downs of that experience: Sometimes you spot clever solutions that the drudges around you fail to see, sometimes you make rookie mistakes that almost bring everything crashing down.
   
3. Everyone is pursuing their own self-interest except Chihiro, who is trying to rescue her parents, but even she eventually realizes that the only way to get them back is to deprioritize them and instead pay the new debts she has acquired. The theme is one of letting go (from the flowers she is crushing at the beginning, from her old school and life, and from her parents), reclaiming your name from those that would take it from you, and helping out wherever you can, without insisting on overturning the apple cart.
   
4. Most great stories contain elements of real life national pain. This film focuses on the environmental damage of Japan’s economic boom, and the financial suffering of that boom’s bust. The magical land is said to be one of many amusement parks abandoned during the recession. The stink spirit Chihiro saves is filled with pollution, and her friend Haku turns out to be the spirit of a river that was paved over. Restoring balance is always a major theme in Miyazaki’s work. (Compare this to truly terrible American animated films with environmental themes like PIXAR’s Hoppers.)
   
5. I’ve had financial opportunities I did not take because I never wanted to force my kids to move once they’d started school. Every middle-grade story about the wrenching pain kids undergo when they have to do so has affirmed that decision.

Ah, 2002: To this day, nobody knows what to do on these anniversaries...