Review Millennium Actress

Spurred on by the demolition of the movie studio that she used to work at the famous actress Chiyoko Fujiwara grants a final interview to movie industry worker Genya Tachibana. This interview is different from any other that she has had before because Genya gives something very precious to her that Chiyoko thought she lost forever, a key that she used to wear around her neck. This helps Chiyoko tell the story of her life in such vivid detail that Genya and his Cameraman as well as the viewer are practically inserted into visions of Chiyoko’s past and career.

Millennium Actress is an artistic masterpiece. Anyone with any integrity as a critic tries not to use those words often but in this case it is true. Millennium Actress manages to tell the story of Chiyoko’s life with the twist of using movies as a metaphor for her life. Metaphors are hard to do well in movies since on one hand they could be either to subtle making the audience possibly miss the meaning of the movie or could be far too heavy handed which just insults the audience. The narrative is very tight but has enough time to fully explore it’s theme.

Although the movie could have stood on it’s own with just the plot but Millennium Actress delivers a one two punch by backing it up to top notch animation. Along with being more detail than the vast majority of anime is also is more realistic in character designs allowing the character to be more approachable. The cinematography is also excellent as is what allows the metaphorical elements to work as well as they do.

For the past few years anime fans have been hoping that Satoshi Kon would make a follow up to Perfect Blue. Millennium Actress manages not only to meet those expectations but to surpass them. Now we can only hope that Kon can manage to make a third classic. But until then Everyone with that calls themselves anime fans should see this movie. I give Millennium Actress a rating of fantastic.

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