Reader Recommendation: Millennium Actress (2001)

Today's movie comes from twitter user @kikirowr, and is hopefully the first of several anime films for the site. Millennium Actress is one of only a few movies from director Satoshi Kon who sadly and suddenly passed away from cancer last year at the age of 46. Of his directorial works, I've only seen Perfect Blue and Paprika, both of which are superbly animated and have deep rich stories. I've also see Roujin Z of which he was only an animator on. Well, that's enough about my history with his works.

Millennium Actress' story surrounds a filmmaker who is making a documentary about a famous movie star who went into hiding 30 years prior. He is granted an audience with her and the film proceeds to recount her life both in her films and her personal life, and why did she disappear all those years ago? I'm not going to play games here, this is a good movie. More about why, after the jump.


The interesting thing about Satoshi Kon's movies are how they often twist and bend reality to tell the story. It's no different in Millennium Actress in that Chiyoko's life is retold as scenes from her many films. We follow her through her entire career, from young girl all the way to old age. Oddly enough the themes in her movies as she grows up keep resonating with her real life as she kept looking for the one true love of her life.

We follow the story with the director and his cameraman as if they are actually at the scene of the memories they are being told about. They even interact with it and comment on it as if they're really being transported through time and space.

This caused me a bit of confusion at times as I struggled to make sense of what was real, and what was a movie. Even in scenes that are clearly ancient Japan and she's a princess, how much of that is actually the movie's plot, and how much is it Chiyoko's 70-year-old memory starting to mix together. This is the brilliant part of the movie. That the storytelling itself recreates the old woman's own mental confusion and gives you a sense of what it could be like as an elderly person. It's confusing, and somewhat frightening when you think about it, but that's what makes the story so great.

Chiyoko's many roles and appearances in Millennium Actress

Of course the animation quality is amazing. It's top notch in every aspect from the expressiveness of the characters to details in the background. The film goes through several eras; ancient feudal Japan, World War II, modern day and even futuristic space scenes on the moon. All of which are brought to life with Satoshi Kon's great attention to detail. This is of course common in all of his works, and what made him so great.

Millennium Actress may not be for everyone, but I certainly enjoyed it. The movie plays with the idea of what memory is and thus messes with reality. All the while it has a touching story of lost love and the celebration of a woman's life. The fact that it made me care about this old lady as if she was a real person, and how impactful the ending was to me, just goes to show the pure quality of the storytelling, characterizations, animation and even voice acting (I watched this in it's original Japanese with English subtitles). Thanks go once again to @kikirowr for her recommendation, I fully recommend it myself as well!