What's wrong with being No Face
Miyazaki Hayao talks about one of his most famous and puzzling characters
No Face is one of the most iconic and mysterious characters from Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning anime movie Spirited Away.
Asked who or what No Face is, Miyazaki says, ‘There are many people like No Face in our midst… It’s the type of person who wants to latch on to others but doesn’t have a sense of themselves. They are everywhere.’ No Face exists without a sense of self and changes depending on the things and people it encounters.”
This got a lot of approval from online fans. Here are a few of their responses:
“I know people like this, who only use fixed phrases all the time.”
“So that’s why No Face speaks like the frog after it eats it — it absorbs the character of the person it eats as it has no character of its own.”
“I can relate to this.”
GKIDS licensed Spirited Away for North America, and gave this description of the movie:
Winner of the Academy Award® for Best Animated Feature, Hayao Miyazaki’s wondrous fantasy adventure is a dazzling masterpiece from one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the history of animation.
Chihiro’s family is moving to a new house, but when they stop on the way to explore an abandoned village, her parents undergo a mysterious transformation and Chihiro is whisked into a world of fantastic spirits ruled over by the sorceress Yubaba. Put to work in a magical bathhouse for spirits and demons, Chihiro must use all her wits to survive in this strange new place, find a way to free her parents and return to the normal world. Overflowing with imaginative creatures and thrilling storytelling, Spirited Away became a worldwide smash hit, and is one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time.
Speaking of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, Time Magazine has named him in its list of “The 100 Most Influential People of 2024,” and Cannes, the prestigious French film festival, is giving Studio Ghibli its Honorary Palme d’Or. The Palme d’Or is the top award you can get at Cannes, and in this case, it’s being given as an honorary award as opposed to a competitive award.
Cannes explained:
“The Festival de Cannes is honoring a cinema legend, awarding its Honorary Palme d’or for the first time to a group: Studio Ghibli.
Alongside the Hollywood greats, the Japanese studio embodied by two superb storytellers, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, and a host of cult characters, has unleashed a fresh wind on animated film over the past four decades.”
In response to this award from Cannes, Studio Ghibli cofounder Toshio Suzuki stated:
“I am truly honored and delighted that the studio is awarded the Honorary Palme d’or. “I would like to thank the Festival de Cannes from the bottom of my heart. Forty years ago, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and I established Studio Ghibli with the desire to bring high-level, high-quality animation to children and adults of all ages. Today, our films are watched by people all over the world, and many visitors come to the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka and Ghibli Park to experience the world of our films for themselves. We have truly come a long way for Studio Ghibli to become such a big organization. Although Miyazaki and I have aged considerably, I am sure that Studio Ghibli will continue to take on new challenges, led by the staff who will carry on the spirit of the company. It would be my greatest pleasure if you look forward to what’s next.”
Meanwhile, over at Time Magazine, Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro wrote a homage to Miyazaki and his work. He said:
“Miyazaki’s work provokes that rare emotion—the shiver of recognition of a type of beauty that is impossible in the real world and thus exists only in his films. Yet he is also a brutal realist regarding greed, war, and human rage. He knows that we shape and destroy the planet and that humans are the best and the worst of our world.
He is entirely genuine. A one-of-a-kind creator who exists fully in his art. He is the single most influential animation director in the history of the medium, and one of my top 10 favorite storytellers in any audiovisual medium. The Boy and the Heron is a subtle masterpiece that exerts a gravitational pull—and many of us feel that pull intensely.”
Congrats to Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli!
I went through a Miyazaki phase some years ago. His films are a joy to watch and very layered.
This is interesting to know, of course, but on a more general level, one of the things I like about Miyazaki's films is that not everything is explained as it would be in a Hollywood offering.