Millennium Actress is an epic love story, a shorthand history of Japan and a visually magnificent study of the relationship between memory and identity. (Even the old and jaded among us who only see 'cartoons' and 'comics' where others see 'animation' and 'illustrated novels' will not fail to be transported by this beautiful movie.)
In Millennium Actress, a documentary filmmaker tracks down a former movie star named Chiyoko Fujiwara. At the height of her career, she withdrew from the public eye. The filmmaker, Genya Tachibana, wants to know why.
He and his cameraman are initially stunned to find Chiyoko and realize that she is old -- but then delighted to see that her spirit is young. When Genya gives the actress an old key as a gift, it inspires her to start talking about her past and her one true love. The key had belonged to Chiyoko. How she got it in the first place is quite a story.
Chiyoko's tale is one of wanting rather than getting. The key is given to her in her youth by a man who is her first love. He is an artist on the run from government authorities and she helps him hide and escape. The artist paints her portrait on the wall of his hiding place and gives her a key, telling her it is the key to the most important thing of all. Then he goes away. The rest of Chiyoko's story involves her endless search for this man whom she loves more than anyone or anything else.
That search mixes fact and fantasy, real life and Chiyoko's movie roles -- and that mix allows our heroine to move back and forth through time and illustrate 500 years of Japanese history. Chiyoko is born in 1932 during the great earthquake in Tokyo, and her real life experiences take the viewer through World War II and into the present day.
But Chiyoko's movie roles also show her as a princess during the 15th century, as a ninja during the Edo Period in the 18th century and as an astronaut of the future. Genya the filmmaker is astonished to find himself playing a hero's role in the telling of some of these stories, but not so surprised as his cameraman, whose imagination likewise makes him a participant in the past.
Unwittingly or otherwise, Millennium Actress is downright Freudian in some of its themes. That, however, has nothing to do with the simple pleasure of looking at the film and its wonderfully realized characters as they move in and out of history. Millennium Actress has already won several awards, including Best Animated Film at the FantAsia Film Festival in Montreal, where it had its world premiere.
(This film is rated PG)
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