Millennium Actress
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Movie Reviews of Millennium Actress
Movie Review: Not just for anime fans.
Summary: 5 Stars
Last night a friend of mine gave me the movie Millennium Actress, which we watched. It's an anime movie from last year by Kon Satoshi, the writer/director of Perfect Blue, which is famous apparently, but which I've never seen. In contrast, Millennium Actress is not that famous in Japan, nor did it make even a whisper when it was released in a whopping six theatres across the United States. I guess unless it's a Miyazaki film released under the Disney name, anime still isn't going to get any notice in America, unsurprisingly.Anyhow, I'm not a big anime fan, so I had never heard of this movie, and wasn't all that excited about it from the title. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised. If you don't know, the story is about a documentary being made about an actress who, as a child in War-era Japan, ran into an anti-government man in the street. He gives her a key to "the most important thing in the world" and she promises to meet him the next day to tell him what she thinks it's to, but by then he's disappeared. However, she insists on keeping her promise. Therefore, when the opportunity to go to Manchuria, where the man said he was going, arises in the form of an acting job, she takes it.
Anyhow, the story is okay, but not great, up to this point. It starts getting interesting when the movie shifts from talking directly about her life to shifting into scenes from her movies. The time period and costumes and everything changes suddenly and so forth. It gets progressively more common as the movie continues, the documentary crew becoming a part of it, jumping from Heian era Japan to the Ronin-filled warring states period to World War II. It's got a lot of references to famous Japanese period films in it (If you miss the reference to Kurosawa, you're just out of it!), which is one of the things that I really liked about it, since I'm a Japanese film buff of sorts. The music was neat, also, and meshed with the film quite well, the film becoming very stylish at moments when the music gets good so as to avoid drowning it out with story.
The story itself does not change that much, but instead of focusing on that, you get caught up in the various scenes jumping around throughout Japanese history, and the search for the man who gave her the key is a good excuse for it. The story, overall, is very melodramatic (typical of Japanese drama), but not trite, so I think it was good. However, like many overly stylish films, the story isn't as important as the look, sound and feel of the film, so having an excessively detailed or complex story wouldn't have worked as well anyways.
I enjoyed the movie a great deal, which is surprising because it was so overly dramatic at times and was in a medium I already take with a grain of salt (anime). However, these features that I would usually dislike were made into very positive parts of it thanks to the style of the film, and increased my enjoyment of it. I recommend it to anyone, not just anime fans.
Movie Review: great
Summary: 5 Stars
i've heard of this movie and seen it on and off for several years, but the clips i'd seen and the description turned me off so i didn't watch it, though i'd heard good things about it. after seeing it however, i don't know why i waited so long! the movie is about two guys who want to interview a famous actress for the documentary they're doing on her life, and the movies she was in are used to tell the story of her love for a man she doesn't really know. this sounded extremely boring to me, and the pacing of the movie isn't fast and exciting, but more of a slower building up to the climax, so if one were to fast forward through to see segments of various scenes... well it just looked boring. but, the movie is actually really good.
first of all, the art is amazing. a lot of attention paid to detail and it's a pleasure to watch purely from an artistic perspective.
so the story is about two guys who interview a famous actress about her life, and she tells this story through movies she's been in. basically when she was young she met a wounded rebel in the streets and hides him from the police for a night. when she goes to see him in the morning he's gone but he left a picture of her that he drew saying something like 'until next time'. so she sort of falls for this man and then obsesses over him for the rest of her life. she gets an offer to be an actress and accepts because the job she was offered took her to where the guys escaped to. so we find out that her success as an actress stems from her desire to find this guy. and this sounds superficial and weak as a motivation to do something with your life, kind of playing off the stereotype that a woman needs a man to complete herself, which is why i like this movie so much. when a typical north amercian thinks of japanese culture, or for some people asian culture in general, they think of the stereotypes of weak- willed, submissive women because of how the media portrays them and such, but this movie subtly twists that stereotype on its head. the girl spends her entire life chasing after this guy and many parts in the movie you wonder why she doesn't just give up on the guy and live her life for herself. at the end of the movie though ... i guess spoiler alert but if i'd known this sooner i'd have watched it sooner... she tells the interviewer that it didn't matter to her if she ever actually caught up with the guy, in fact if she did catch him she would probably get bored of him because it was the chasing that she lived for. and this is like anything in life, if you chase a man o a job or even an ideology of some kind, the journey is the important thing, meaning that she is living for herself. and that made the movie for me. it twisted the stereotype of japanese women western people have. so i liked it.
Movie Review: A very well-done film
Summary: 5 Stars
The story of the film is done in the style of a "play within a play." Genya Tachibana is working on a documentary about a famous actress named Chiyoko Fujiwara. Chiyoko is an elderly actress who has withdrawn from public life. As Genya talks with Chiyoko, we see the story of her life from her teenage years to being a middle aged superstar. The flashbacks that appear are interspersed with segments from Chiyoko's films. While Chiyoko's life takes place surrounding World War II, the characters in her films span from the Sengoku period to a futuristic space age.
One of the big elements of the story has to do with a dissident artist that Chiyoko helped to escape from the military. She became attracted to him, but he had to flee. However, he left behind a key to his suitcase, and Chiyoko wants to find him. She initially became an actress in order to have the opportunities to travel and to try to find him. Over the course of the story, we learn that Genya was actually part of Chiyoko's past, although she doesn't realize it right at first.
The execution of the story is very well-done, although there are a lot of layers to the storytelling. You really have to watch it more than once in order to pick up on details that you may have missed the first time you watch it. While there's nothing visually that would be unacceptable to younger viewers, I think the execution of the storytelling of the film would be rather confusing to them. I would personally recommend this film to anime viewers who are fifteen or sixteen years of age and older.
There are two special features on the DVD. The first is a forty minute documentary about the making of Millennium Actress. The documentary is in Japanese with English subtitles. The narration is done by the voice actor for Genya. Over the course of the documentary, interviews are included from Satoshi Kon, several members of the production team, and all three voice actresses for Chiyoko. The other extra is a trailer for Millennium Actress that is slightly over a minute long. This trailer is in English to promote Dreamworks' release of the film.
Millennium Actress is a very well-done anime film, and it has become a classic. I would personally recommend this DVD for anyone who considers themselves as a fan of Satoshi Kon's work or as a fan of anime in general.
I wrote this review after watching a copy of this DVD that my husband purchased for me as a gift.
Movie Review: A Perfect Movie That Expands The Realm Of Storytelling
Summary: 5 Stars
Now THIS is a hard movie to put into words. I can easily apply words like excellent, beautiful, mind-blowing, multi-layered and stunning, but that merely conveys my personal rabid enthusiasm for "Millennium Actress". The first ten minutes or so are easy enough to describe - a pair of filmakers set out to profile and interview a famous Japanese actress who's lived as a recluse for many years, having disappeared from public life at the height of her career. From there the territory it heads into is among the most open-to-interpretation, the most moving, and (in my opinion) the most metaphysical plot ambiguities and mesmerizations ever captured on film. Ten people could watch this and come up with ten different takes on the movie, ranging from the mundane (as in worldly and rational, NOT dull) to the whimsical to the terrifyingly dark or to the dreamlike, or any combination thereof. I and the ones I saw this with came up with similar interpretations, but that could be due to our similar ways of thinking. Someone with a different worldview or imagination or set of beliefs might come up with a vastly different, but no less valid, way of interpreting it. There are no 'wrongs' in interpreting a movie and what each individual gets out of it. I still cling to hopes of someday publishing some of the stories floating around in my head, and if I'm fortunate enough to do so, some readers may get quite different takes on it than what I had in mind, and that's not wrong, it's just different.
One thing I can say about "Millennium Actress" is that it has some of the most realistic animation I've ever seen. Not realistic in the same sense as "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" of the firs segment in "Animatrix" where it looks nearly live-action (brilliantly so), but realistic in terms of body language, facial expressions, personal mannerisms, and so on. And the subtitling job is dead-on flawless; if you're a viewer who usually avoids subtitled films, this could be a great introduction.
In 2001, Millennium Actress split Japan's prestigious Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festifal Animation Grand Prize with the already-legendary "Spirited Away". The 2 movies are very different, but Millennium Actress is 1000% worthy of tying "Spirited" as its full equal. I can think of no higher praise to give this film.
Movie Review: Simply perfect.
Summary: 5 Stars
The term "anime" immediately invokes feelings of disgust in a good number of American filmviewers, usually due to it's immediate association with the great bulk of mindless sci-fi and fantasy drivel that makes it to the States (see: Pokemon, Sailor Moon, etc.) and the fact that most people simply think cartoons are for kids. For the most part, they're right -- I'm certainly not going to sit here and laud the mature, artistic merits of Hand Maid May, for example -- but rightfully acclaimed director Satoshi Kon is the exception that proves the rule. Perfect Blue, his first film to make it across the Pacific, set new standards for both animation and screenwriting with it's elaborate, psychedelic, and very adult spiral into schizophrenia. Now, Millennium Actress continues his motif of the mind as a gateway to fantastic, non-linear timelines. It begins when Genya Tachibana, the director of a documentary commemorating a famous movie studio, seeks out Chiyoko Fujiwara, a legendary actress who disappeared from the studio some 30 years previous. With his reluctant, ascerbic cameraman in tow, Genya gains the now-elderly Chiyoko's confidence by presenting her with a literal key to her past. As their interview progresses, the trio travels through Chiyoko's life story, where her movie roles and experiences weave an impossible thousand-year tale of love and commitment -- for Chiyoko and Genya alike. Sometimes Millennium Actress swings the viewer from heart-wrenching drama to hilarious comic relief (and back) fast enough to leave psychic whiplash; at other times, Chiyoko's particular blend of memoirs and memories cloud the path to her resolution in a haze of geriatric senility -- but this beautifully animated film always keeps just enough grounded in reality to develop a compelling, coherrent, compassionate story. Millenium Actress is a tribute to the possibilties that Japanimation holds as a cultural artform, and is a terrific sophomore offering from Satoshi Kon. Highly recommended!