Review: Millennium Actress

Dir. Satoshi Kon (2001)

The following review contains minor spoilers.

How much of our memory is reliable? What is there left when our perceived purpose in life passes? Do we pursue our personal meaning in life or does that meaning dictate our choices?

A small documentary team sets out to interview an aging actress, a huge name at the height of her career, but now nearly forgotten by many. What results is a whirlwind of life recollections woven into the fading memories of the films our heroine acted in. Her many characters, her personal life choices, and the changing landscape of the historic events she survived as a young woman all combine in a perfect unreliable narrative.

Millennium actress is a phantasmagorical swirl of obsession, purpose, and melancholy reminiscence; punctuated by fourth wall breaking doses of occasional humor. The audience should be warned, the overall tone is certainly not happy-go-lucky. The film may be initially hard to follow, yet this is by design. As the narrative progresses, the visual and emotional beats iterate and eventually merge. The story becomes clear by the end yet it never stops to fully spell itself out. This unreliability is the pictures biggest strength yet, for some, may also be the biggest detraction.

It's a movie that rewards an audience paying careful attention, as motives that may seem surreal become of paramount importance to the emotional impact of the story’s end. The film's pace fluctuates, riding the same emotional roller coaster on which our protagonists find themselves.

With all the inventive edits and a continual conflation of cinema versus memory, there is never a dull moment. The images are carefully composed and the drawing quality is quite good, the reduced frames on the animation are clearly noticeable in segments (which can take away from the experience). The soundtrack blends traditional Japanese instrumentals with an occasional Hollywood orchestral vibe, it's one of those albums that is easily appreciated even if the listener has never seen the film.

Should you see Millennium Actress? If the concept of a melancholy meditation on fame gone by and emotional obsession that unfolds in a maelstrom of inventive edits and images sounds interesting, you just may fall in love with this particular once in a millennium actress. If you're looking for something action-oriented or straightforward in terms of narrative, then you may not get much enjoyment from this film.

By way of second opinions, rotten tomatoes gives millennium actress 92% out of 100 and IMDb gave it 7.9 stars out of 10.

-Josh Evans