Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress (千年女優, Sennen Joyū) is a 2001 Japanese anime film by director Satoshi Kon and animated by the Studio Madhouse. It tells the story of a documentary filmmaker investigating the life of an elderly actress in which reality and cinema become blurred. It is based on the life of Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine.

Plot

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 Kyoji Ida, 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.

Cast

• Chiyoko Fujiwara is portrayed by three actresses during her lifetime:
  • Miyoko Shōji voices Chiyoko as an elderly woman
  • Mami Koyama voices Chiyoko as a middle-aged woman
  • Fumiko Orikasa voices Chiyoko as a teenage girl
• Shōzō Iizuka as Genya Tachibana
  • Masamichi Satō voices Genya as a young man
• Masaya Onosaka as Kyōji Ida
• Shōko Tsuda as Eiko Shimao
• Hirotaka Suzuoki as Junichi Otaki
• Tomie Kataoka as Mino
• Takkō Ishimori as the Chief Clerk
• Kan Tokumaru as the Ginei Managing Director
• Hisako Kyōda as Chiyoko's mother
• Kōichi Yamadera as the Man with the Key
• Masane Tsukayama as the Man with the Scar

Additional voices were provided by Mitsuru Ogata, Tomohisa Asō, Kōji Yusa, Makoto Higo, Kōichi Sakaguchi, Tomoyuki Shimura, Akiko Kimura, Tomo Saeki, Hirofumi Nojima, Ruri Asano, Hiroko Ōnaka, Yoshinori Sonobe and Yumiko Daikoku.

Production

Following the release of Satoshi Kon's previous film Perfect Blue, Kon considered adapting the Yasutaka Tsutsui novel Paprika (1993) into his next film. However, these plans were stalled when the distribution company for Perfect Blue, Rex Entertainment, went bankrupt. Millennium Actress had the same estimated budget as Perfect Blue (approximately 120,000,000 yen). The screenplay was written by Sadayuki Murai, who used a seamless connection between illusion and reality to create a "Trompe-l'Å"il kind of film". Millennium Actress is the first Satoshi Kon film to feature Susumu Hirasawa, whom Kon was a long-time fan of, as composer.

Reception

Millennium Actress was favorably received by critics, gaining a 92% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan said of the film "as a rumination on the place movies have in our personal and collective subconscious, Millennium Actress fascinatingly goes where films have not often gone before". Kevin M. Williams of the Chicago Tribune gave the movie 4 stars and put his feelings for the film this way: "A piece of cinematic art. It's modern day Japanese animation at its best... It's animated, but it's human and will touch the soul of anyone who has loved deeply".

Box office performance