Chiyoko, la actriz milenaria

Genya Tachibana is a TV documentary maker and has tracked down his favourite actress; Chiyoko Fujiwara. On interviewing her Genya presents her with an object she had lost long ago; a key. From there we are transported through time and see Chyoko story about lost love and her struggle to find it. The key belonged to a man she meet when she was young. He was a rebel on the run and Chiyoko gave him shelter. He gave her the key as a thank-you. When he disappears she sets out to find this man. Still young, Chiyoko is approached by a film maker to star in his new film; she accepts and sees this as a chance to find mysterious man. She become a huge success, but she is always empty, never finding the man she loves.

Satoshi Kon has created a wonderful film about the lose of love and the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find it. What makes this an interesting watch is that when we go into Chiyoko's past, Genya and his camera man also walk around in her past; interacting with people. But its just not a trek through her past, her memories meld with the movies she has made; as the movies parallel her life on her journey of finding her love, but also time in history. The scenes we see are from the movies she has made, but the story is her own life; her reality and her imagination have just crashed into one another.

The animation here is just visually amazing. Satoshi Kon's character designs are so unique they set themselves apart from another animations. All the backgrounds are so detailed and textured. What i find great is that Satoshi Kon adds that tiny bit of surrealism; adding more dimension and thought, here its how Chiyoko's memories meld into the movies she's starred in. Satoshi's script is so deep and full of angst. Its hard to watch this woman on her quest for love always failing; yet she blindly keeps going no matter what.

At great movie about the journey of love and how its never ending; in this world and the next.

Without a doubt, Millennium Actress is a masterpiece. Fluid scene transitions, vibrant colors, and gorgeous pieces of music not only allow, but forces the viewer to feel empathy for the character. I admit, I was teary eyed for several scenes in the movie, it's cinema at its best.

The story, like Kon's Perfect Blue, is told in a way where reality and fantasy are blurred and joined. Unlike Perfect Blue, the truth and fiction are not important matters in Millennium Actress. Perfect Blue was a movie about an event. Millennium Actress is a movie about an emotion: Love. That search for the long lost love is the only thing that keeps one young. Chiyoko, the main character, travels through centuries and millenniums to find it, but always fails. Yet her zealous passion for this quest is what ultimately keeps her young, even at death.

Watching this film, we will all be reminded of that one passion we've had during our youthful days and be reminded about our quest to fulfill that passion. Maybe that feeling will return after you've viewed this movie. Maybe you'll regret certain actions and decisions that you've made in the past. But that's of no importance. Because at that point, the film has done its job and you'll feel a little warmer inside.

Chiyoko Fujiwara: even her names evokes 1,000 years of Japanese history beginning with the Fujiwara clan who dominated Japan a millennium ago as she dominated Japanese movies. The story begins with an elderly actress who recounts her life and career to a Quixotically worshipful producer and his Sancho Panza-like cameraman. Film juxtaposes with reality; and the triumphs and tragedies of one actress meld into those of Japan itself; objectivity and fantasy mock each other and dance with one another. At one moment the cameraman is making a pungent comment about cornball emotions, and the next moment he is dodging burning arrows from one of her movies. Perhaps, Chiyoko really is a woman cursed or perhaps blessed to endure 1,000 years of unrequited love. Perhaps the mysterious "human-rights activist" that she pursues through the centuries, and through one movie after another, represents an ever-receding ideal of love, truth, and human dignity that is yearned for by individuals and nations alike. They met just briefly, he gave her the key to "the most important thing in the world," and Chiyoko and the film characters she plays spend the next 1,000 years and the rest of her film career and the rest of her life trying to return it.

"Millennium Actress" and the techniques of animation were made for each other. Live-action could not possibly have created this stunning plunge though the centuries nearly as well, nor have depicted the transformation of a beautiful young women into a beautiful old woman. So-called live-action movies would have buried a live actress under layers of Yoda-like plastic to achieve the same effect.

Presumably you will be watching this on DVD; after you have watched this movie through once or twice, go back and select scene 12 and just watch that: it begins with an apprentice Geisha, (as played by Chiyoko), risking everything to pursue the human-rights activist (in this generation he is a rebel Samurai.) A merciless Javert-like pursuer barges in to ruin everything, but a Quixotic stranger rescues her for sake of idealistic love and sets her free to ride through the land of Japan to continue her search. She rides through Hokusai landscapes and through the battles of 19th-Century Japan. She continues undaunted even though the wheel of her curse keeps turning and is symbolized by increasingly modern modes of transportation: carriages, trains, bicycles; the splendor and tragedy of Japanese history whizzes by and still her journey continues. Her eternal quest for freedom turns into a freedom in itself, and -- by the way -- the medium of animation gives a mighty leap from the Saturday-morning ghetto to which American imaginations has confined it and shows off freedoms that live-action could never do as well.

This movie is action-filled but never manic; emotional but never overwrought; thought-provoking but never airy. The unpleasant little word Surrealism comes to mind -- it's unpleasant because it often evokes elitism, self-indulgence, and confusion. But "Millennium Actress" is never neurotic, never smug, and always invites the audience to join in the fun of mixing up film, memory, history, and desire, in surprising ways. There are enough delightful coincidences and plot twists to entrance an admirer of Shakespeare or Dickens. The musical score is excellent. The quality of animation is excellent, and these characters have more originality, life, individuality, and heart than in many movies being made in Hollywood.

After you have checked this out, look into Satoshi Kon's most recent movie "Tokyo Godfathers." Then investigate the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, who is the world's greatest maker of animated films, and also Miyazaki's fellow geniuses of Studio Ghibli. 9/10

If you have seen any other movies by Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers), you get the idea that he knows how to tell a story. The stories are told in a dramatic, yet unconventional way. The story is about a Japanese movie studio that is torn down. The current executive in charge gets an interview with the studio's star actress, whom has been living in seclusion for years and does not give interviews. The movie seamlessly integrates dramatic moments, with light humor and stunning visuals. The visuals are breathtakingly imaginative not in that they are exotic and surreal, but rather stunningly realistic. Where Perfect Blue is more about the dark side of human nature, this movie is about the resilience of the human spirit and hope. What is similar, is that the reality of the story is in question. What is real, and what is perceived, is based on the perspective of the viewer. Definitely a must see movie.

-Celluloid Rehab

A key reward for writing IMDb comments is that readers send you recommendations. This is one that I had a hard time tracking down. I'm glad I did.

This seems to be viewed only by fans of anime, and that's a shame. I'm not knowledgeable enough in anime to note how it fits. It seems to be in the more "realistic" spectrum, with fewer edges and less posturing.

Japanese writing has gravity. In traditional mode, the eye falls down as it gathers a phrase. The characters are derived from ink on paper instead of the western fonts shaped by chisel on stone. And where the characters I use in English have no inherent semiotic association, Kanji is inherently pictographic. A Japanese reader will literally harvest phases by falling through images, images in a static situation with dynamic sweeps therein.

So when I come to anime, I look for this. Being nonJapanese, I can see it and appreciate it more than a native can I believe.

That's why I'm excited about this, because the visual phrases are imposed on some folds I know.

First about the folds. The way this is structured is as a double documentary of an aged film star, "Sunset Blvd"-wise. Its double because we have a camera and we are seeing the two documentarians: one the interviewer and the other with a camera. (We never get a view through that camera, I think.)

The interview blends with the actress's flashbacks. Now this is very clever, how this is done.

It isn't memory: the documentarians are physically there when a "past" episode occurs. The cameraman constantly asks "what next?" and the interviewer takes on the role of certain characters in the films. These really are films, we see, when sometimes the "camera" rolls back and we see the crew. This is a third camera.

But more: all of the films over many decades conflate and merge, interweaving back and forth through history, forming a single quest for a love. That love is for a painter, who clearly is the animator of this cartoon, "Duck Amuck"-wise. These films not only merge with each other, and the quest, and the "interview," but with her life proper.

As with "8 1/2 Women," earthquakes figure in the shifts and overlays of stories. The thing that binds it all is a "key" which we learn early is to a paintbox, the source of all the paintings we see. Its wonderful organic oneiric origama. oneiroticama.

And that's just the story. Watch how the phrases are constructed though. We fall through them, soft layer after cloudy image.

Its like relaxing into love with perfect trust. You really should see this.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.