Spirited Away (2001)

Hayao Miyazaki’s rich anime fantasy follows its ten-year-old heroine into the labyrinth of a spirit-world bathhouse, teeming with phantoms and peril.

When exploring their new neighbourhood, 10-year-old Chihiro and her parents unwittingly stumble into a magical spirit world. With her parents turned into pigs, Chihiro must embark on a perilous, surreal journey to save them, in which she finds work at a bath house, and encounters a dragon and a witch. With a nod to Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away is Miyazaki’s much-admired Oscar-winning masterpiece.

“Spirited Away sets its intimations of mortality, the decline of a culture and the loss of nature against one of the most sumptuous and dazzling mises en scène ever created in cinema – in the bathhouse of the gods, where the initially timorous young heroine goes to find work in order to rescue her parents who have been cursed by a magic spell. This is an enchanting and exciting coming-of-age story that can be enjoyed by all ages, but the subdued, lambent melancholy of the movie’s final third, with its train ride into the shadows, is a tour de force of what animation can do.“ Susan Napier

“This is not only as good as animation film gets – this is simply cinema at its best.“ Anne Gjelsvik

“Joe Hisaishi’s enchanting score, the watercolour-like tableaux, and Miyazaki’s trademark trust in his audience to grasp the essence of a moment without any dialogue – aesthetic, tonal and emotional perfection.“ Alan Mattli

2001 Japan
Directed by
Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by
Toshio Suzuki
Written by
Hayao Miyazaki
Featuring
Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki
Running time
125 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Spirited Away

Critics

Manish Agarwal
UK
Carlos Aguilar
Mexico/USA
Nigel Andrews
UK
Jason Barker
UK
Whelan Barzey
UK
Manuel Betancourt
USA
Stuart Brown
UK
Anna Cale
UK
Sarah Dawson
South Africa
Claire Diao
France/Burkina Faso
Karlo Funk
Estonia
Anne Gjelsvik
Norway
Philippa Hawker
Australia
Claire Marie Healy
UK
Andrew Heskins
UK
Laura Horak
Canada
Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
UK
Justin Johnson
UK
Sten Kauber
Estonia
Sek Kei
Hong Kong
Matthew Leyland
UK
Kjetil Lismoen
Norway
Johannes Lõhmus
Estonia
Alan Mattli
Switzerland
Susan Napier
USA
Helen O'Hara
UK
Ashanti Omkar
UK
Anna Ida Orosz
Hungary
Aneta Ozorek
Netherlands
Jonathan Ross
UK
Rainer Rother
Germany
Nicolas Schaller
France
Jez Stewart
UK
Brian Tallerico
USA
Éric Vernay
France
Ramin Zahed
USA

Directors

Jessica Ashman
UK
Pablo Berger
Spain
Hope Dickson Leach
UK
Michaël Dudok de Wit
Isamu Hirabayashi
Japan
Gitanjali Rao
India
Gary Tarn
UK

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