Millennium Actress (2001), An animation within a play.

Directed by: Satoshi Kon | Written by: Sadayuki Murai
Produced by Madhouse Inc.

Awards

• Best Animation Film & Fantassia Ground-Breaker Award; 5th Fant-Asia Film Festival
• Ofuji Noburo Award; 56th Mainichi Film Awards
• Orient Express Award; 34thSitges - Catalonian International Film Festival

"The film's matter-of-fact, realistic animation style makes a fitting contrast to the topsy-turvy nature of its narration. Though the moments of drama have an inescapable corniness, as a piece of visual legerdemain as well as a rumination on the place movies have in our personal and collective subconscious, "Millennium Actress" fascinatingly goes where films have not often gone before." - Kenneth Turan, Los Angelese Times

Millennium Actress (Sennen Joyū), the second work of the late Satoshi Kon which takes a turn from the illusion-indulged thriller violence to a fictional biography based on the life of real veteran actress Setsuko Hara. The movie that sets out to be a biography of an old secluded former actress rapidly turns into a vivid adventure filled with passion and drama as old memories are remembered and portrayed with the use of her early movie scenes as memory-recollection medium's. This brilliant display of "a play in a play" meant to set you of guard from the beginning truly is a Satoshi Kon signed feature.


When long time fan Genya Tachibana (Shôzô Îzuka) and his young jovial cameraman set off to document the  aged former actress Chiyoko Fujiwara (Miyoko Shôji), they find themselves reliving more than an old star's biography/Filmography. Chiyoko's love for film was at start a mere mascaraed for her love for a mysterious activist she fell in love with. The story entrusts us with the delicate story of how her feelings and stubbornness kept her searching for this man for decades in a time of national oppression and war in 1930-1940.


The clear and sharp color were slightly polished and uplifted from it's predecessor Perfect Blue becoming -in my humble opinion- more keen to the eye which could be joyful and quite dark  undertoned in dramatic entries.The Shadows are soft implementing the clear shading I so admire in this Animated Film.

Chiyoko's life told through her various scenes and character incarnations

The movie didn't have a wide variety of main characters but many recurring ones that cleverly substituted unknown antagonists in her film scenes to form the row of collage-like memories such as the man with the scar that hunts down the mysterious activist throughout the film . The characters that it did posses (even if they had very little character development) were the ones I LOVED. Not once did I think that Genya or his easy-going cameraman where an annoyance or in the way of a particular film scene of the actress' past, on the contrary they filled the position of spectators and main duo of this film, the ones that where in her plays and in Genya's case: the one that played a roles in her film scene-memories he watched and cried to. Genya's interrest and respect for Chiyoko is also explained and exploited and comes together in this -what can only be described as- satisfying closure.

Click to enlarge

Rating
9,8 - True Drama!

I loved this movie from beginning t'ill the last frame. The moving story and misfortunes in her lives illustrated by her own film scenes is a a clever concept in which her life is shown true fragments of her best moments and career. Every scene has its feel and moment that has been carefully portrayed through well written screenplay. I can only hope others enjoy it as much as I did even after the movie ended. Do comment if you saw this movie already and if you liked it as much as I did.

M.

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