Spirited Away

Spirited Away, Japanese animated fantasy film, released in 2001, that is one of the most acclaimed works by master director Miyazaki Hayao. The movie was for a time the highest-grossing film in Japanese history and won numerous awards, including the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Academy Award for best animated feature. The popularity of Spirited Away helped to popularize Japanese animation in the Western world, and its universal acclaim elevated the status of animation as a cinematic art form.

Background

Director Miyazaki Hayao and Studio Ghibli were already extremely successful in Japan before Spirited Away’s release, perhaps most notably because of the beloved 1988 fantasy classic My Neighbor Totoro, an early hit that became emblematic of the studio. In 1997 Miyazaki released the more adult-oriented Princess Mononoke, which was a blockbuster hit in Japan and one of the first Studio Ghibli films to be theatrically released in the United States. Spirited Away shares elements with both these films, and other films by Miyazaki, including themes related to the interaction of humans with the natural and supernatural world.

Premise and summary

The film follows a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro (voiced by Hiiragi Rumi in the original version and by Daveigh Chase in the English-language adaptation), who is traveling with her parents on the way to a new home. They arrive at a mysterious tunnel that leads to an abandoned theme park. Her parents decide to explore, and Chihiro reluctantly follows them. When her parents find a delicious banquet laid out in an empty shop and decide to stop for dinner, Chihiro refuses to eat and goes to explore on her own. She finds a bathhouse where she encounters a boy named Haku (Irino Miyu/Jason Marsden), who warns her to leave immediately. She returns to her parents and finds that they have turned into pigs and that the park has become populated by strange spirits. When she flees, she discovers that the path from which they came has changed, with a massive river trapping her inside the park.

As Chihiro panics, Haku finds her and leads her through a crowd of bathhouse workers and patrons, a wide variety of spirit creatures. Haku tells her how to get to the bathhouse’s boiler room and ask for a job from the boiler man, Kamaji (Sugawara Bunta/David Ogden Stiers), a spirit who takes the form of a man with six spidery arms. Kamaji refuses to hire her but helps Chihiro by claiming that she is his granddaughter and persuading a servant named Rin (Tamai Yumi/Susan Egan) to take her to the owner of the bathhouse, a witch named Yubaba (Natsuki Mari/Suzanne Pleshette), to bargain for a job. Yubaba tries to scare her away, but Chihiro is persistent and Yubaba’s enormous infant son, Boh (Kamiki Ryunosuke/Tara Strong), demands his mother’s attention. Yubaba, who has taken an oath to give a job to anyone who asks, eventually gives Chihiro a work contract. Chihiro signs the contract, and, in doing so, gives her name away to Yubaba. Yubaba gives her the new name Sen.

Yubaba orders Haku to take Sen away and put her to work. When Sen tries to talk to Haku, he acts cold and superior toward her. He passes her off to Rin, who tells her that Haku is Yubaba’s henchman and cannot be trusted. Sen goes to work as Rin’s assistant, over the objections of the spirit workers. Sen must tend to a number of customers, including a repulsive river spirit who needs to be refreshed and the ravenous No-Face (Nakamura Akio/Bob Bergen), who attempts to eat everything in sight, including the bathhouse staff. Moreover, Sen must work while trying to keep hold of her true name, discover the truth about Haku, and look for an opportunity to save her parents.

Reception and influence

Spirited Away was enormously commercially successful in Japan, grossing more than $230 million there and $40 million more worldwide and spending years as the highest-grossing movie to be released in the country. The English-language adaptation of the film was released by Disney in 2002. Spirited Away’s success also attracted notice outside Japan and helped Japanese animation become a mainstream phenomenon in the West. The film’s win for best animated feature at the Academy Awards in 2003 drew further attention to the art form and helped Americans in particular begin to take animation more seriously.

It was also a critical hit, praised not only for its gorgeous animation and endlessly enchanting designs but also for its rich themes steeped in the Shintō religion, Japanese folklore, and universal truths about nature, love, and bravery.

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Production notes and credits

• Studio: Studio Ghibli
• Director: Miyazaki Hayao
• Producer: Suzuki Toshio
• Writer: Miyazaki Hayao
• Music: Joe Hisaishi
• Cinematographer: Okui Atsushi
• Running time: 125 minutes

Cast

• Hiiragi Rumi/Daveigh Chase (Chihiro)
• Irino Miyu/Jason Marsden (Haku)
• Natsuki Mari/Suzanne Pleshette (Yubaba/Zeniba)
• Sugawara Bunta/David Ogden Stiers (Kamaji)
• Tamai Yumi/Susan Egan (Rin)
• Nakamura Akio/Bob Bergen (Kaonashi/No-Face)
• Kamiki Ryunosuke/Tara Strong (Boh)