Spirited Away

Animation, Adventure, Family | 2001 | PG. 2hr 5min
CAST: Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mari Natsuki DIRECTOR: Hayao Miyazaki SATURDAYS WITH STUDIO GHIBLI | IN JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

The Film

Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award®-winning masterpiece Spirited Away was the biggest box office hit of all time in Japan and a film that helped redefine the possibilities of animation for American audiences and a generation of new filmmakers.

Wandering through an abandoned carnival site, ten-year-old Chichiro is separated from her parents and stumbles into a dream-like spirit world where she is put to work in a bathhouse for the gods, a place where all kinds of nonhuman beings come to refresh, relax and recharge. Here she encounters a vast menagerie of impossibly inventive characters — shape-shifting phantoms and spirits, some friendly, some less so — and must find the inner strength to outsmart her captors and return to her family. Combining Japanese mythology with Through the Looking Glass-type whimsy, Spirited Away cemented Miyazaki’s reputation as an icon of inspired animation and wondrous, lyrical storytelling.During her family's move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches, and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts.

The Series

See three Hayao Miyazaki masterpieces on the big screen. enjoy a pastry, cereal, or a mimosa with your popcorn at these Saturday morning events. Spirited Away (May 26), Princess Mononoke (June 2), and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (June 9).

Films will be shown in their original versions, subtitled in English.

Special thanks to Smith Brothers Farms for helping sponsor this series.

Movie

Reviews

Spirited Away has much to say about many worthy things: the life of the spirit, materialist greed, the importance of words, the power of love.

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Vivid, amusing and genuinely awe-inspiring.

Neil Norman, London Evening Standard