Spirited Away (2001)

Spirited Away (2001)

The beautifully hand-drawn Japanese winner of the 2003 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Very Best

9.0

Movie

Japan
Japanese
Animation, Family, Fantasy
2001
HAYAO MIYAZAKI
Akiko Tomihira, Akio Nakamura, Bob Bergen
125 min

What it's about

A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.

The take

Frequently considered one of the greatest animated movies of all times, and certainly the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, Spirited Away is Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli at their very best. It was also the first non-English animation movie to win an Oscar. On the surface, it's a film about a Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a young girl who stumbles into an abandoned theme park with her parents. In a creepy spiritual world full of Shinto folklore spirits, she sees all kinds of magic and fantastic creatures, while having to find a way to save her parents and escape. In addition to the adventure, the coming-of-age theme, and the motifs of ancient Japanese lore, the film can also be understood as a critique of the Western influence on Japanese culture and the struggle for identity in the wake of the 1990s economic crisis. A deep, fast-paced, and hypnotizing journey.

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Comments

Magic is real and it lives in Japan under the tip of Hayao Miyazaki’s pencil. This is, hands down, the best aimated movie of this century.

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