Her eventual plan is to find her parents and escape, but for the moment Chihiro agrees to meet this challenge.

As a writer and director, he has brought us such classics as My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke.

In each of these masterpieces, he hand-draws tens of thousands of individual frames.

His films are recognized for their grand scope and unforgettable characters.

It always amazes me to think that a Miyazaki film is as epic and original as Star Wars, only to be dumbfounded by the fact that each unique Miyazaki film is equally magnificent.

He may not be as prolific as a Woody Allen or an Alfred Hitchcock (though he certainly deserves to be compared to such luminaries) but every Miyazaki film is a classic.

Spirited Away won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and it was the first film in history to make more than 200 million at the box office before opening in North America.

Although I had previously watched Kikis Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke, nothing could compare to the experience of watching a Miyazaki film on the big screen.

I remember being absolutely floored by the intricately crafted imagery and the lasting impact of the story.

Every time you watch Spirited Away, you discover something new.

When her father takes a wrong turn and the family ends up lost in the woods, the ordinary girl finds herself in an extraordinary world.

The family discovers a tunnel that leads to fields of endless wavy grass.

Notice how the wind seems to pull Chihiro towards the tunnel.

Once she enters this cave, she has passed the magical threshold.

He captures the fuzzy glow of a sunbeam filtered through a stain-glass window and dust motes floating in the air.

The film is not plotted like most western animated films.

Character movement, especially at the beginning, is realistic.

Chihiro feels uneasy and does not want to explore the park, but her parents follow their noses to a great feast, steaming, delicious, and abandoned, at one of the fair stalls.

The majority of Miyazakis inspiration, however, comes from the Japanese Shinto and its eight million gods who embody the mountains, trees, and rivers of the natural world.

These gods, or kami, were translated to spirits in the Disney-produced English dub of the film to avoid alarming puritanical American audiences.

Chihiro runs, but night falls, and the grassy plains have turned into a lake.

Themes of growth and renewal are prominent in Spirited Away, and Shinto as well.

Over the course of the film, Chihiro must perform great deeds in order to be purified.

Watch Spirited Away English Dub