Right around Christmas this past year I finally had the opportunity to dig into the filmography of anime director Satoshi Kon. Readers of the blog probably recall my high praise for Paprika, the film that really got me interested in his stuff. All of his films are very independent of each other and bring their own unique offering to the mix and it goes without saying that the second film I viewed, Millennium Actress, is extremely different from Paprika.Millennium Actress is a story told through flashback. It is present day and a historical Japanese movie studio is being torn down and TV personality Genya Tochinaba decides to seek out and interview the studio's most legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara. Now a recluse, Chiyoko is an old woman living in modest home in the mountains and she hasn't made a public appearance since suddenly vanishing from the public eye some 30 years before. His visit re-unites her with a long lost item - a key given to her by a stranger when she was a girl.
During the course of the interview we follow the life of Chiyoko through the films she made during her illustrious career and we are witness through the eyes of Genya and his cameraman. What we learn is that the key was given to her by a mysterious stranger (an artist and political dissident) that she helped escape from state police during pre-war Japan in the 1930s. Having developed a love for him and always wanting to find and re-unite with him, her roles became a metaphorical representation for her search as her career takes her around the world as well as her own personal development and growth. I suppose, too, that the key could be seen as symbolic of personal freedom... something that the stranger represented and something Chiyoko feels she loses or cannot find with her career. Even so, her search never ends.
The approach Millennium Actress takes to storytelling is probably not new or groundbreaking, but it is nonetheless interesting, albeit a bit confusing at times as reality and fantasy tend to blur, a hallmark of Kon's style. Another similarity to other Kon works is the emphasis on the art of film itself. Actress is no doubt a tribute by Kon to filmmaking itself as evidenced by the subject matter of the film and the care with which it is handled. We see similar thematic elements in Paprika with Detective Kogawa's storyline.
Despite being a bit hard to follow at times, Millennium Actress is a worthwhile title for anime fans to check out. It is a love story of, both of its characters and for filmmaking, and definitely possesses universal elements to appeal to film aficionados. A Kon production, it is beautifully animated with careful attention to detail and a fantastical element that taps into the imagination. I didn't like it as much as Paprika, but it is a great film in it's own right and I can easily recommend it. You probably won't find it at your local movie rental place, but it is available through Amazon and NetFlix. 8/10
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