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/Major spoilers alert!/ I haven't seen any anime film for a while, not since "Spirited Away" a couple of years ago, and even "Spirited Away" was the creation of Hayao Miyazaki, whose style I've become quite familiar with since the days of "Nausicaä" and "Totoro." In fact, the only Japanese anime movies I was exposed to was those of Ghibli Studio, so I didn't know what to expect from "Millennium Actress".
Well, it blew me away.
The graphic style of the movie is unique, and so is the storytelling. The seemingly simple premise has the heroine Chiyoko, the dream-eyed girl who becomes an actress, taking on a journey to find her love, the anti-government activist/painter whom she met only once when she was a teenager (how hopelessly romantic can you get than that?). The search spans over many decades through her life and career as an actress. The film starts out with a in-hiding 90-year-old Chiyoko being tracked down and interviewed by a filmmaker and Chiyoko fan, Genya (whom we later find out has more connections with her than we're led to believe in the beginning), and so it begins the flashbacks and the elaborate style of storytelling. What is really interesting about the storytelling is its non-linearity and the incorporation of Chiyoko's films into reality. The movies of Chiyoko are the stories within the major story, and they connect the dots that would finally present a picture of the timeless themes of love, lost, chance and the chasing of life-long dreams.
This fragmented narrative style and intertwined storylines at first might seem confusing, but the movie actually flows seamlessly along like the falling of a leaf or the trickling of a stream. It is poetic, and it is sad and uplifting at the same time. The fact the movies within the movie are the fragments from the major genres of Japanese films (within a time span of roughly 1000 years) only enhances the sense of journeying through time (not to mention the homage to Japanese film industry...loved the Godzilla scene), and it is as if the audience are along the ride of Chiyoko's long and relentless chase that transcends time and space (literally). The journey through the past also brings out the nostalgia for a time when chaos and innocence co-exist, when simple dreams are not to be crushed under the weight of cynicism.
"Millennium Actress" is full of symbolic and literal imagery. Chiyoko's Key is (pardon the pun) the key to the story ("her memories to the past"). It takes Chiyoko to many places and fills her with wonder and longing. Sure, her obsession with the key and the man of her dreams would seem crazy in reality, like you would half expect her to call the key "my precious," but the love is so literal and so earnest that you can't help rooting for her. Time is also symbolized by the creepy old lady with the wool spinner who haunts Chiyoko throughout the movie. She turns out to be the symbolic image of the aged Chiyoko who mourns the loss of her dreams and her youth. Unlike in the movies where time can be framed and stand still and an actress can be young forever, in reality, Chiyoko cannot escape the wheel of time. For me, it seems like the movie is giving tribute to the youthful energy and innocence that usually attribute to one's ability to dream, stubbornly.
"Millennium Actress" is a movie about love and the pursuit of love, but it can also be about the pursuit of happiness, perfection, dreams or whatever that drives human beings forward on this journey we call life. However, the movie best sums up what really signifies the journey and our relentless search for its meanings when the dying Chiyoko says to Genya that maybe it doesn't matter if she ever finds the man she loves because after all "it is the chase that [she] really loves;" in the end, it is this fervent love for life that is the key to living.
10/10
