Millennium Actress (2001)
"Sennen joyû" (original title)

A TV interviewer and his cameraman meet a former actress and travel through her memories and career.

Director:

Satoshi Kon

Writers:

Satoshi Kon, Sadayuki Murai

Stars:

Miyoko Shôji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa

4 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Miyoko Shôji	...	Chiyoko Fujiwara (70's) (voice)
Mami Koyama	...	Chiyoko Fujiwara (20-40's) (voice)
Fumiko Orikasa	...	Chiyoko Fujiwara (10-20's) (voice)
Shôzô Iizuka	...	Genya Tachibana (voice)
Shouko Tsuda	...	Eiko Shimao (voice)
Hirotaka Suzuoki	...	Junichi Ootaki (voice)
Hisako Kyôda	...	Mother (voice)
Kan Tokumaru	...	Senior Manager of Ginei (voice)
Tomie Kataoka	...	Mino (voice)
Masamichi Satô	...	Young Genya (voice)
Masaya Onosaka	...	Kyoji Ida (voice)
Masane Tsukayama	...	The Man with the Scar (voice)
Kôichi Yamadera	...	The Man of the Key (voice)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Stephen Bent	...	Junichi Otaki (voice)
Matt Devereaux	...	The Man with the Scar (voice)

Storyline

A movie studio is being torn down. TV interviewer Genya Tachibana has tracked down its most famous star, Chiyoko Fujiwara, who has been a recluse since she left acting some 30 years ago. Tachibana delivers a key to her, and it causes her to reflect on her career; as she's telling the story, Tachibana and his long-suffering cameraman are drawn in. The key was given to her as a teenager by a painter and revolutionary that she helped to escape the police. She becomes an actress because it will make it possible to track him down, and she spends the next several decades acting out that search in various genres and eras.

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Plot Keywords:

key | cameraman | actress | bombing of tokyo | film making | 

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Genres:

Animation | Drama | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for thematic elements, violence and brief mild language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Site [us]

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese English

Release Date:

14 September 2002 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Millennium Actress

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$18,732 (USA) (12 September 2003)

Gross:

$37,285 (USA) (26 September 2003)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bandai Visual Company, Chiyoko Commitee, Genco

Technical Specs

Runtime:

87 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The character of Chiyoko herself is somewhat reminiscent of Setsuko Hara, a famed Japanese movie star of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, who likewise withdrew suddenly from public life. Satoshi Kon has recognized this influence in an interview, also citing Hideko Takamine, but insisting that Chiyoko is primarily a universal human character.

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Goofs

The length of the key changes several times.

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Quotes

Junichi Ootaki: So, Daddy found a new actress.
Eiko Shimao: [Off Camera] Good! You act in a hurry, "Sonny"
Eiko Shimao: [Leaving the room to meet with Chiyoko and Ootaki] So, your name is Chizuko...
Chiyoko Fujiwara: It's Chiyoko

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Connections

References Yojimbo (1961)

User Reviews

A complex and beautiful film

In some films, the dividing line between subjective and objective reality is very tenuous. In Satoshi Kon's poetic Japanese animé film Millennium Actress, it is almost non-existent. When the Ginei studio is about to be razed, documentarian Genya Tachibana decides to make a documentary about the studio and its greatest star, legendary actress Fujiwara Chiyoko who disappeared from public life more than thirty years ago. After finding an old key that belonged to the aging actress, he travels to her secluded mountain retreat with his assistant Kyogi Ida to interview her for the documentary. When Genya gives her the key, it unlocks a stream of memories that transports us (along with the cameraman and interviewer) to a different reality that allows us to relive one thousand years of Japanese history using the medium of cinema.

As she tells her story, Chiyoko recounts her birth at the time of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923 and how she was discovered as a child actress despite her mother's objection that she is too timid. She reveals how a strange young painter, a political outcast whose name she never discovers, gives her a key and then disappears, telling her that the key is "the most important thing there is". Chiyoko's dream of reuniting with her lover keeps her alive and becomes what her life is about. Unfolding more as emotion and mood than narrative, Kon takes us on a surreal journey through a series of films within films in which Chiyoko attempts to find her lost love, playing a princess, a ninja, a geisha, and even an astronaut. In the process, we witness a seamless tableau of Japan's history: the medieval period in the 15th and 16th centuries, the era when the Shogunate was in power, the Meiji period when the Emperor was restored, the Showa period before World War II, and the post-war occupation and recovery.

The line between events of Chiyoko's real life and scenes from her films is blurred and the film is difficult to follow on first viewing. To complicate matters even further, the interviewer, Genya, is cast in many roles in which he becomes almost a comic figure as Chiyoko's rescuer. Though the film is often puzzling, the search to recapture the defining moment in Chiyoko's life strikes a universal chord and we identify with her desperate quest. Though I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, Millennium Actress is a complex and beautiful film and Susumu Hirasawa's hypnotic musical score adds to the blend of warmth, emotional power, and magical realism. Kon sees life as a big romantic movie full of melodrama, humor, and longing and seems to be saying that while there is often confusion between who we really are and the shifting roles we play in life, what remains constant is our longing for love.