Animation 2000s PG 125 min
Spirited Away (2001) review
A sulky ten-year-old wanders into a world of spirits, loses her name, and has to work for a living. Miyazaki's most complete film and his most quietly radical.
Most children's films are about a protagonist discovering they were special all along. Spirited Away is about a girl discovering that she has to work, and that the work itself is what makes her a person. It is a coming-of-age story with a labour contract at its centre.
The World and Its Rules
Chihiro is ten, sulky, and being moved to a new town against her wishes when her parents take a wrong turn and end up in what appears to be an abandoned theme park. Her parents eat food meant for spirits and are transformed into pigs. Chihiro is stranded in a world where her name is taken from her and she must earn her keep in a bathhouse for the supernatural.
Miyazaki's world-building is exceptional because the rules are consistent and never fully explained. The bathhouse is a business with a hierarchy, customers, and a labour shortage. The spirits are not good or evil; they are customers, colleagues, and managers. The film refuses to divide its world into sides, which is why it feels like a place rather than a plot.
Read more about animation cinema in our Animation genre hub, explore the work of Hayao Miyazaki in our directors section, or see where this film lands in best films of the 2000s.
The Bathhouse as Workplace
The central institution of the film is a bathhouse, and the film's most subversive quality is that it treats this as a job. Chihiro scrubs a giant tub, is assigned a senior colleague who resents her, and learns that the stink spirit is actually a polluted river. The film's fantasy elements are all metaphors for labour and environmental damage, and they are presented without moralising.
Yubaba's theft of Chihiro's name is the film's key mechanic. Losing 'Chihiro' and becoming 'Sen' means losing the continuity of self that makes it possible to want to go home. Haku's warning that she must remember her name is the film's central instruction, and it is a more sophisticated idea about identity than most adult films attempt.
Animation and Design
The film is hand-drawn, and the craftsmanship is visible in ways that contemporary computer animation rarely is. The bathhouse is an entire ecosystem of corridors, boilers, and railings, drawn with an architectural coherence that means you always know where characters are. The train sequence across water is the most beautiful two minutes Miyazaki has produced, and it contains almost no narrative event.
Joe Hisaishi's score is the other pillar. The main theme is built on a simple descending figure that the film reprises at the moment Chihiro remembers her name, and the emotional effect is disproportionate to the musical material. The film is deliberately slow in its middle section and rewards the patience with a final act that feels genuinely earned.
What It Withholds
The film explains almost nothing. We never learn what the curse on Haku is in full, what happened to the previous inhabitants of the theme park, or why the bathhouse exists. The ending is happy but not tidy — Chihiro leaves, and there is no suggestion that the spirit world will not continue without her.
Some viewers find the film's resistance to explanation frustrating, and it is the main reason it is sometimes described as dreamlike rather than structured. The more useful reading is that the film is organised around emotional logic rather than causal logic, and that its rules are consistent enough to support that. It is Miyazaki's densest work and his most rewarding.
Verdict
Miyazaki's most complete film, and the best introduction to his work for anyone who has only seen the more obviously fantastical titles. It is a coming-of-age story about labour, identity, and environmental damage, told with a hand-drawn world that remains the high-water mark for animation as a craft. It refuses to explain itself and is stronger for it. One of the few films that genuinely works for children and adults on entirely different levels.
What works
- World-building with internally consistent, unexplained rules
- Treats work and identity as the real subject
- Hisaishi's score is among his best
What doesn’t
- Deliberately slow middle act
- Refusal to explain its mythology frustrates some viewers
Themes and ideas
- Identity and memory
- Labour and dignity
- Environmental damage
- Growing up through responsibility
Frequently asked questions
What happens when Chihiro loses her name?
Yubaba takes the characters of her name in a contract, leaving only 'Sen'. Without her full name, Chihiro begins to forget her previous life — which is the film's way of showing that identity depends on continuity of memory.
Is Spirited Away suitable for young children?
It is rated PG and generally fine for children around eight and up. Some of the transformations, particularly the parents becoming pigs and the stink spirit sequence, can be frightening for younger viewers.
What does the stink spirit represent?
A polluted river. Chihiro removes a bicycle and assorted debris from it, and it is revealed to be a river god. Miyazaki has said this was inspired by a river he helped clean as a child.
Is there a sequel?
No. Miyazaki has consistently declined to make one, and there is no continuation of the story in any form.
More animation films we have reviewed
Every review is scored and argued. These are the closest films in our collection to Spirited Away.
-
93
Toy Story review
A cowboy doll and a space ranger learn to share a boy's affection. The first fully computer-animated feature and still one of the best-written.
★★★★½ 4.8/5
-
92
Everything Everywhere All at Once review
A laundromat owner discovers she must connect with parallel versions of herself to save existence, and the film turns out to be about a mother and a d…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
-
91
The Grand Budapest Hotel review
A legendary concierge and his lobby boy navigate a stolen painting, a family fortune, and the collapse of Europe. Anderson's funniest and saddest film…
★★★★½ 4.7/5
-
93
Toy Story review
A cowboy doll and a space ranger learn to share a boy's affection. The first fully computer-animated feature and still one of the best-written.
★★★★½ 4.8/5
-
95
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring review
The first and best of the trilogy, and the film that proved a sincere fantasy adaptation could be a serious piece of filmmaking rather than a novelty.
★★★★½ 4.9/5
-
88
Gladiator review
A Roman general is betrayed, enslaved, and fights his way back through the arena. The film that proved the sword-and-sandals epic could still work.
★★★★½ 4.6/5
About the reviewer
Nadia Brekke joined AJ Movie Reviews after five years covering international cinema for a Scandinavian culture magazine. She writes primarily on animation, science fiction, and non-English-language film, and she has a particular interest in how genre films carry political argument. She has…
A note on this review
This review is based on a full viewing of the film and contains no spoilers beyond what the marketing material reveals. We do not accept payment, gifts, or press trips in exchange for coverage.