It’s rare that a foreign film (and an animated one, no less) lands on American shores with quite as much hype as Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature, Spirited Away. And that hype isn’t without reason. Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke) is arguably the greatest anime director in history, and when a director achieves that kind of stature, his movies don’t tend to get ignored. Add that to the fact that Spirited Away set a box office record in Japan and it happened to get picked up by Disney for its United States release, and … well, watch out.

The basic storyline for the movie has been along since Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum put a pen to paper: Little girl gets separated from her family, and must find her way back home through mysterious and magical surroundings. The girl in this case is Chihiro, a 10-year-old Japanese child who, while traveling with her parents, ends up outside an abandoned amusement park.

Tired and hungry, they wander inside to find a full buffet awaiting them. While her parents chow down, Chihiro wanders toward an old bathhouse, only to only to be accosted by a young man who advises her to leave. She runs back to her parents only to find that they have turned into pigs.

Then night falls, demons emerge from everywhere, and a witch named Yubaba goes looking for her, and then things get interesting. Her journey involves encounters with an eight-legged boiler room attendant, a boy who turns into a dragon and a baby as big as an elephant.

At this point in the review, it should be obvious that Spirited Away isn’t a study in realism. However, it’s that same willingness to defy reality that makes Spirited Away one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Hayao Miyazaki is a master at creating the fantastic, and in that sense this movie is his magnum opus. In his previous ventures, Miyazaki’s imagination has been confined by his stories’ settings. In this film, Miyazaki finally creates an entirely new universe, one not restricted by time, place, or conventional logic. What he then produces is impossible to describe. It is at once humorous, beautiful, and evocative. Simply put, it is a masterpiece.

The most striking thing about the film is its incredible attention to detail. After being raised on Disney films, it’s impossible not to notice the stark contrast between this film and, say, The Lion King in both depth of color and richness of detail.

For instance, upon Chihiro’s entrance into Yubaba’s drawing room, we see an aerial shot of the floor of the room. There are more shades of green in a single marble tile on that floor than in the entirety of The Lion King. This is just one of hundreds of images notable for its emphasis on shading and color. Over an entire movie, this has the effect of furthering the distance between fantasy and reality. Nothing that is real could possibly be as beautiful and nuanced as the world we see in Spirited Away.

Miyazaki is also notable for his attention to what American animators would consider “throwaway detail.” In almost every scene, he adds something behind or to the side of the action which, while certainly not necessary, makes the movie feel more complete than it would be otherwise. Similarly, Miyazaki is unafraid to add characters and objects that don’t simply exist to advance the plot.

Throughout the entire movie, Yubaba is followed by a trio of green disembodied heads which bounce around and speak what appears to be Russian. No explanation for their presence is given, for the simple fact that none is needed. They are there because the director has imagined them there. If they served some crucial role in the story, it would only cheapen their presence.

Spirited Away has the courage and the originality to do as it pleases. It is for this reason that, for the two hours in which it runs, Spirited Away captures one’s mind and one’s imagination and leaves one in awe of the beauty of Miyazaki’s world.