jmaruyama Review of Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress (2001)

Visually splendid but awfully melodramatic...

[5/10 · 10 November 2002]

(Some Minor Spoilers) Satoshi Kon's sophomore piece Sennen Joyuu (aka Millennium Actress) is a decent anime (animated) feature that is a visual wonder. Like his previous feature Perfect Blue, Kon succeeds in transcending the boundaries of Japanese Animation to bring a love story that doesn't follow the typical norm of Japanese Anime (guns, robots and tentacles). Millenium Actress follows the life of Chiyoko, a cute girl with a mole through the turbulent history of Japan from the Age of the Samurai, through the Feudal Wars, to the Tokugawa Age of Foreign Influence, up through the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, into the World War II Tokyo bombings and beyond. Taking its cue from Forrest Gump (1994), Chiyoko, an aspiring actress continually finds her life intertwined with the various time periods as she pursues the love of her life, a mysterious artist. Told through the eyes of a Producer documenting the life story of Chiyoko through her films and roles, Kon plays tribute to various Japanese film genres during the course of this feature. From the Samurai epics of Akira Kurosawa, to the sappy melodramas of producer Haruki Kadokawa, to even the giant monster mayhem of Inoshiro Honda, Millennium Actress covers it all. Unfortunately the story becomes a bit tiring after a while and the `time jumping' from decade to decade becomes a bit confusing (one minute we are in Manchuria in the 1930's and then we're transported back in time to Feudal Japan with scarcely an explanation). The love story aspect of the story is touching if a bit melodramatic as we are never really given any explanation of why Chiyoko is so enamored by the tall stranger she meets as a girl. There are funny bits of comedy that break up the somber mood however and the inventive animation will recall similar techniques used in the British Animation Feature Yellow Submarine (1968) (mixing animation with semi-realistic photos). All in all Kon succeed in breaking the stereotypical impressions of Japanese Animation and like fellow contemporaries Otomo Katsuhiro (Akira) and Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) are introducing a whole new generation of Western Audiences to Anime.