kathleen-pangan Review of Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress (2001)

Poignant and beautiful, a stirring foreign film

[10/10 · 3 December 2007]

Millennium Actress (Sennen joyu in Japan) is a poignant and beautifully created animated film that comes off more as a stirring foreign film than an anime. Even the drawings and movie posters in the film are stylized as movie posters used to be painted in the 1930s. The film is about a director and his camera man who go deep into Japan's countryside to get an interview with a once-legendary actress that stopped acting at the height of her career and who is now elderly and reclusive. The result is a journey through the aging actress's memories, from her lifelong love as a child for an anti-government painter before World War II to the many famous roles she has played; the scenes change as rapidly as the actress's mind drifts, and powerful emotions from her memories trigger scene changes as we travel with her in her mind. We learn about her life and eventually the secret connections between the many characters in her life and films, including the director who goes to her house for the homage interview.