Millennium Actress (2003)

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, from the way Chiyoko's story was told to the way they portrayed each period that she lived in.

In many ways millennium actress is a masterpiece, which is to be expected from legendary film maker Satoshi Kon. However, I feel like the film also missed a lot of opportunities at the same time and I can't shake the feeling it could have been a really great film, instead of a film with great things in it.First of all, the concept of the movie is fantastic. Making a movie about a dying actress reflecting on her past through the movies she starred in has enormous potential and could make for a very emotional story. In my opinion, Millennium actress never quite manages to pull this off though, due to a couple of reasons. The main problem, I feel, is how detached we are from the main character, Setsuko Hara. We never get a grasp on who she is or what she aspires to, besides of course the man she thinks she loves. this is all due to the way the movie is presented. The movie is segmented into different chapters of Setsuko's life, each represented by the movie she starred in at the time. So we see her play a plethora of different characters throughout the years, ranging from a timid aspiring actress to a determined ninja, but never really get to know Setsuko herself. The moments that show Setsuko as an actual person instead of a character she played in a film are very scarce. If you'd ask me to describe her personality, I really wouldn't be able to.This is a direct result of how the focus is laid on how the story is presented instead of the story itself, which is next to nonexistent. The plot can be summed up in two lines. Setsuko meets a young boy from whom she receives a key. In her naivety she falls in love with him and chases him all around the world to give him back the key to what he claims to be the most important thing in the world. Between the beginning and the end of the movie, nothing much happens, but the uneventfulness of the story is disguised under a blanket of interesting, varied visuals. The jumping around between different movies from her career is sometimes difficult to adjust to, and personally it withheld me from getting invested in much that was going on. The movies starts relying on surprising you with each next setting, rather than actually getting you involved in the story and the characters.The only emotional scene in the movie, which admittedly is pretty great, takes place at the very end, when Setsuko passes away. We find out she'd been chasing a ghost for her entire life since the man she was after had been tortured to death in WOII. One of the last lines of the film is Setsuko saying right before she dies ''After all, it's the chasing after him I really love'' Her endless search for him kept her youthful spirit alive and gave purpose to her life, and overall I think it's a very fascinating message. I just wish the movie as a whole had had a little more substance. Satoshi Kon sacrificed a potentially amazing story for a gimmick that gets old pretty fast. I feel it should have focused more on the human element or been a short film.I would still say Millennium actress is a very good film by any standards, but also my least favorite of Sathoshi Kon's by that.

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.

Satoshi Kon's films tend to have ambitious narrative structures. This one, "Millennium Actress", is no different. It revolves around Genya Tachibana, a documentary director who tracks down Chiyoko Fujiwara, a Japanese movie star he's long admired from afar. He finds her living in the countryside, now a recluse, having retired from acting some 30 years ago.Much of the film watches as Chiyoko recounts her life's story for Tachibana. Her many accomplishments and achievements are then tied to a young man whom she once briefly met and fell in love with. Tachibana, it turns out, spent much of her life attempting to track this man down, not knowing that he died shortly after their first encounter. The film then becomes an elaborate metaphor for a mankind which is doomed to perpetually chase after idealised, objects of desire. The unbridgeable gap between fantasy and reality then becomes the engine which both inspires all human progress, and is responsible for an intrinsic human Lack, an unquenchable discontentment. Achievement, then, is paradoxically tied to an inability to quite achieve. Typifiying the film's psychological complexity, "Millennium Actress" is structured as a grand chase, Chiyoko's reality is repeatedly traumatically interrupted whenever she nears her lover (on a psychological level, humans tend to self-sabotage, or self-destruct the closer they get to Desire), the film is symbolically framed by giant rocket-ships, mankind's capabilities limitless so long as there exists a gap to be bridged, and Tachibana's long-distance love for Chiyoko echoes Chiyoko's own love for the stranger.Whilst the film's first hour may seem disjointed, shapeless and even dull, a powerful ending helps bring things into focus. This ending is almost ruined by an unnecessary line of dialogue, given to Chiyoko, which spells out the film's central theme. It's a heavy-handed and unneeded line. Elsewhere the film uses Chiyoko's life story as a means of trawling through Japan's own political and cinematic history (lots of allusions to famous Japanese films and events).7.9/10 – Worth two viewings.