Movie Talk -- Spirited Away (2001)

Not just for kids, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away will take you on an amusing journey into a world of whimsical spirits, where our protagonist, the adolescent girl Chihiro, must learn to face her fears and trust herself in order to rescue her parents, who have eaten the food of the spirits and have been turned to swine by Yubaba's magic spell.

While wandering what appears to be an abandoned fairground, Chihiro's parents find a stall that mysteriously has a whole cornucopia of food laid out in it. Hungry from a long drive to the town where they plan to start a new life, and confident that cash and credit cards will solve any misunderstanding when the owner of the stall shows up, Chihiro's parents dig in and really engorge themselves.

But, you see, the currency of humans and the currency of spirits are not the same things.

All alone with night setting in, Chihiro finds an ally in Haku, who appears as a boy of about her own age. He makes her eat a berry from the spirit realm -- assuring her it won't turn her into a pig -- so that she doesn't disappear.

In accord with Haku's instruction, Chihiro heads to the basement of the bathhouse to seek out Kamaji, the six-limbed boiler-man, who presides over a workforce of ensorcelled soot-spirits. She must convince Kamaji to give her a job. Otherwise, the witch Yubaba will turn her into an animal too. Can she convince the stubborn and cunning Kamaji to employ her, or will he trick her into giving up and turning away, just as Haku warns her that he will try to do?...

Before we get too far, and perchance run into a Radish Spirit, I will leave off-.. so that you too might be spirited away someday by this Studio Ghibli classic.

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