Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece traverses the thin veil between earthly and spirit worlds in a deeply imaginative exploration of the power of courage and friendship in the face of the unknown.
Wandering through an abandoned carnival site, 10-year-old Chihiro is separated from her parents and stumbles into a dreamlike 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.
Spirited Away is presented in conjunction with Rituals of Devotion, highlighting the exhibition’s themes of transformation through labors of love.
Spirited Away is co-presented by the Roxie Theater.