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Read this review if you're trying to decide whether to get this movie without having someone tell you so much about it that it ruins all the surprises.
I just watched this with my very intelligent--and rather conservative--spouse, a very smart engineer friend from India who doesn't think much of anime, and an intellectual Russian friend who's pretty knowledgeable about movies.
The engineer fell asleep--thought it was a crashing bore and a complete waste of time. My wife found it annoying, due to a tendency in Japanese films for what people of northern European descent would consider overacting/overemotionalism. The Russian Jewish film buff and I found it both fascinating and touching.
So--which response would you have? I'll try to help.
1. The film's structure is complex, and is constructed rather the way a classical symphony is constructed. It's a narrative, but one that loops back in on itself, revisiting leitmotifs throughout, and ending in a way that, say, a Mahler or Brahms fan would find very satisfying. However, someone who wants straight ahead storytelling, with a clear sense of what is actually happening at any given moment, may get lost here and there. I didn't, but I'm a serious film buff. Few filmmaking tricks surprise me any more. This did.
If you liked "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or "Being John Malkovich" or Carlos Saura's "Carmen" those might be clues to you liking. However, my wife like two of these a lot and didn't like "Millenium Actress."
The real clincher would be if you've seen a bunch of Japanese movies made in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s--because, paralleling the story of the central characters is a loving homage to both Japan's history and to that golden era of Japanese films, whose tropes and styles appear in this, somewhat "Zelig" style.
My wife thought it jumped around in Japanese history, but it's more accurate to say that it jumped around the different genres of Japanese filmmaking in the postwar era--the samurai films (divided into a bunch of subcategories), realistic modern films, and sci fi, from domestic dramas to war films.
A lot of the time what's happening onscreen seems to shimmer magically between the characters' own stories and the stories of the films they're talking/thinking about.
2. Another aspect is that the central personal theme is unrequited love, which is the romanticism of a young teenager--so if you find "Romeo and Juliet" and all those films young teenage girls swoon at nothing but annoying, that might be a counter-indicator for this film.
It's important to add that this film's PG rating might mislead you into thinking kids could see it. But it's only subtitled--not dubbed--and I think its complex musical structuring and the need for you to know something about Japanese history and film history would cut out many young teens who might love wonderful Japanese animes like "Spirited Away."
3. By "knowing something about Japanese history" I mean it helps a lot to recognize from people's makeup and costumes whether you're seeing, say, Heian era or Tokugawa era or Meiji era costume drama. Maybe that's not absolutely required, but I think that's part of why my Indian engineer friend thought it was a stupid jumble of stuff.
So here's the trick: emotionally, at its core this film is no more complex than "Bolt," the delightful American animated 3D feature my wife and I saw and loved last year. But cinematically this film is up there with some really sophisticated films. So if you just look at the character and quests of the central characters you might dismiss this as a kids' film only.
From my point of view I figure we were all kids once, so I'm OK with seeing something from that simpler perspective as long as there are other things to keep my mind engaged. This did so fully, and I'm very glad I saw it.
But if you haven't seen "Rashomon," "Seven Samurai," "Sansho the Bailiff," and a bunch of other Japanese Golden Era classics--the kind that get put out under the Criterion imprint--maybe you should see those first. You'll appreciate this more if you do.
I only had one real gripe about the film, but I'm probably wrong about this. In a scene on the Moon, the heroine moves around as if she's moving in Earth gravity, instead of that skippy hoppy thing real astronauts on the Moon do. OTOH in Japanese live-action sci-fi films I'm sure they moved just the way the heroine did. That's why my gripe is probably wrong, since it's not about landing on the moon--it's about movies about landing on the moon.
My Russian Jewish friend doesn't know but a tiny fraction of what I know about Japanese history and cinema, yet she enjoyed it. Therefore the caution I just expressed about needing to know Japanese history and cinema may not be necessary. Maybe what's in the film is enough to guide you. I am sure that the more you know about Japanese history and cinema the more you'll enjoy this, though.
I'm fine with Euro-restrained cinema too. See my review of "Let the Right One In" for an example. But though I'm no fan of unrequited love, and some of my favorite actresses are Helen Mirren and Judy Densch, neither of whom ever act like Chiyoko in this film, I still enjoyed this thoroughly.
BTW the main character reminded me slightly of Ingrid Bergman--think Casablanca. That, too, is about unrequited love in ways strongly reminiscent of this film, though visually there's very little connections. From Japanese films of the 50s this made me think of Machiko Kyo, though she could express an earthiness we never see in Chiyoko. Besides Bergman I also thought of Greer Garson and Shirley Jones and other "good girl" heroines of our own cinematic golden age (even when they played prostitutes!).
One other note--the streets and vehicles and clothing styles of every era shown are all accurate and detailed. The filmmaker did his homework.
Lastly, I've seen another animated film by Satoshi Kon, "Tokyo Godfathers," which you might want to see first. It's set squarely in contemporary Tokyo, is emotionally rich and complex, but told in a pretty straightforward narrative form. I really liked this film as interesting cinema but also as powerfully engaging emotionally--somewhat more than "Millenium Actress," though I was moved by the latter.
See my Amazon page if you want to look at other no-spoiler reviews, including Avatar.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 18, 2010
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 3, 2022
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 13, 2022
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 25, 2012
Top reviews from other countries
TriDrive
Great movie, but not this particular version.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 5, 2015
Great movie, but not this particular version.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 5, 2015
This movie is great, and if this was just a review for the movie I would give it five stars, however the UK version by Manga is not great.Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 5, 2015
The US Region 1 release was only in Japanese with subtitles.
The UK Region 2 release added an English dub, which made changes to when the characters were speaking, and what they were saying.
Unfortunately there's only one set of subtitles which are for the English dub, so if you are watching in Japanese they are often out of sync with the audio, and it is obvious even without speaking Japanese that it is not a proper translation.
For example, sometimes a character will just say one or two words, which will result in a long sentence of subtitles.
See the attached image for a comparison of the same scene in both versions.
If you are planning on watching in Japanese, I don't recommend the UK release.
Images in this review
Alex Ionut Ilie
Very good movie and very good 4K release.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 26, 2022Paul Trundley
A Millennium full of delights.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 24, 2016P. Collins
Inaccurate information.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 1, 2009
