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Millennium Actress
A beautiful celebration of film of history 
Studio: Studio Madhouse Format: Movie Released: 1/23/2001 Written by: Face 
Millennium Actress is an eloquently narrated memoir, unfolded in a self-assured manner, but told in the most potent of rhetorics. Starting out as a documentary of Chiyoko's past achievements and contemporary disaffections, we are presented with a film that is more than just an epic love story, or a moving self-portrayal. Above all, it's a cinematic showpiece embracing Japanese history, and celebrating the aptitude of film through any medium.
The movie opens with a documentarian named Genya and his cameraman traveling to conduct an exclusive interview with the legendary actress Chiyoko. As the interview begins, the two filmmakers find themselves moved to such a great extent that they have become a part of her recollections by taking a role in them. During her younger years, her life revolved around a desperate struggle to find the man she met when she was a child. On that day, he gave her a key "to the most important thing there is." When she finds out that he was forced to escape to Manchuria, Chiyoko decides to take up on an offer to be in a movie, recently given to her by a production studio. Her film career unexpectedly jump starts, and she becomes a national icon, and the embodiment of what Satoshi Kon feels is lacking in entertainment today. Chiyoko grew up in an age when movies were not besieged with blundering celebrities, but rather, a time in which they were graced with seasoned movie veterans. Satoshi is intrigued, and respectful of this era of film, and shows it through Chiyoko. Her postwar movie career is highlighted with sequences of fact and fantasy intermingled with real life events and fictitious movie roles. Several hundred years of Japanese history is interpreted by various clips, and segments of her acting days. Growing up during WWII allows her to give us an idea of what it was like to survive in such a time of destitution and hardship. The secret of Chiyoko's past is also revealed through various movie roles, and Genya and his cameraman are there every step of the way, confused yet stunned in pure astonishment. She plays a distraught princess during the middle ages of Japanese history, a skilled ninja during the Edo period of the 18th century, and an astronaut blasting off from a futuristic space station in the not so distant future. Her capacity as an actor was, without a doubt, remarkable, which is shown through her varying roles; however, while each of her movies were unique in setting, situation, and circumstance, they were also very similar in ambition and purpose. In each movie, she is put into a desperate position, forced to risk her own well-being to save the man she loves. Her life paralleled her film career; the struggle to put out the proverbial fire within wholly consumed her in every sense of the word.  In many ways, Chiyoko is the history of Japanese cinema. She first appeared in feature films during the 1940's, and continued on for nearly forty years until she entered a thirty-year period of seclusion. Her career took place during the early days, the rise of Japanese film. What started out as a small niche soon transformed into a universal pastime, and Chiyoko was there every step of the way, offering her God-given talents towards the success of the industry.
Our role as a viewer is very much like Genya's: we are there for the experience, a rollercoaster ride through the life of Chiyoko as she transforms from a child into a wise elderly woman. By the end, I felt more than impassioned. I felt as if I was there with Chiyoko throughout her entire lustrious career, just as Genya was. As the credits began to roll, a wonderful sense of fulfillment consumed my very being, and I can only hope that I was not alone. * * * * * (Excellent) Posted: October 25, 2003
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