Millennium Actress (2003)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Brilliant and touching

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Taking the viewers through its multitudes of layers, Satoshi Kon's sophomore effort is another mind-bending trip that blurs the lines between reality & cinema this time. Millennium Actress does get difficult to follow at times but the interest in its story is never lost.The story of Millennium Actress follows a TV interviewer & his cameraman who are interviewing a retired actress who vanished from the public eye at the peak of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost, it unlocks the secrets of her life in unimaginable ways.Co-written & directed by Satoshi Kon (best known for Perfect Blue & Paprika), the film begins on a calm note but things gets more n more intense as plot progresses. Kon's unraveling is slow at first but once the board pieces are set, he starts shifting the gears with added frequency.Unlike his previous feature, Millennium Actress makes terrific use of humour and is often hilarious. The hand-drawn animation is even more impressive, with changing backgrounds that occur without disrupting the characters' actions in the forefront. Also, the shifting perspective never allows the viewers any moment to settle down.On an overall scale, Millennium Actress is an inward journey into one's own past that also serves as Satoshi Kon's ode to both Japanese history & cinema. Not only is its narrative inventive, complex & trippy but it's just as overwhelming, almost to a point that it becomes difficult to keep up with its rapidly changing settings. Still, it is worth a shot for its creativity alone.

As most Satoshi Kon films, it is confusing and a bit tedious at the start. But at the very end, it concludes beautifully, where everything falls in place. An elderly woman recalls her life, mixing facts with the stories of her films, accompanied by a fan in an interview, where reminiscing of the past makes them feel young again.

A great (and underrated) piece of work by Satoshi Kon. As always he has masterfully bridged the gap between reality and fiction. And this time he has added an unique form of storytelling to boot. A little background on Japanese history enriches the whole experience. But even without such knowledge, this is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of work.As always, the screenplay is brilliant and transitions fluid. The story starts at a slow pace but quickly picks up tempo. And never lets go, leaving viewers little space to breathe. In the end it leaves my mind in a state of ecstatic discomfort.A must watch for any and every fan of magic realism.

Millennium Actress is a multilayered story told in a succession of beautifully composed, film-inspired moments, which traces the fortunes of Japan during the twentieth century through the prism of the experiences of screen star Chiyoko Fujiwara. Satoshi Kon is far too interesting a director to settle for a conventionally happy conclusion to Chiyoko's quest. He litters her path with earth-shattering events perpetually reducing her world to rubble. Through it all Chiyoko perseveres, acknowledging in her final moments that what has motivated her perhaps more than love of a man is love of the chase itself. The animation style Kon uses is deliberately old-fashioned, with still frames and sequences where nothing but a character's mouth moves. There's more than enough complexity in the structure of the story. Simple, sometimes stark lines and colors that echo the reality on screen combine with beautiful backgrounds to create a complex and elegant meditation on the power of dreams and images, the need to forge them, and the life-changing impact of finding your own star to follow.