Promoting Good Animation: Millennium Actress
Millenium Actress is one of those animations that just stay with you. Beautifully styled and directed with the surreal vision of Satoshi Kon, one of my favorite directors ever, combined with its bittersweet plot and juxtaposition with the heartaches of reality keeps me returning to the film, and the particular clip that I’ve chosen, time and time again. I love this clip in particular because whenever I watch it, my heart starts to pound and it makes me sort of marvel at life.
The movie centers around Chiyoko. As a child, she met a mysterious man who she became quickly infatuated with, and her infatuation — I hesitate to call it love — stays with her all through her adult life, decades after they are separated. She becomes an actress, hoping that her mystery man from so many years ago will recognize her from one of her productions and seek her out. While that is just a brief overview of the narrative, what happens in the clip captures what I feel to be the heart of the story — Chiyoko’s extraordinary life, which is marvelous and beautiful, and the history that surrounds her.
As she races through different periods, each set is designed with layers: foreground through background, each separate piece is flat and incredibly detailed, yet do not move at all except horizontally across the screen as Chiyoko passes them by. This amplifies the surreal nature of it all, simultaneously making Chiyoko the centerpiece of a wildly changing and exciting landscape. Though the backgrounds don’t move, it would be much more confusing if they did, considering their intense detail.


Combined with the soundtrack, which is electrifyingly fast-paced, the overall scene seems to whiz by yet feel enriched with detail and beauty. Meanwhile, there is the repeated image of the wheel, showing that history is circular and so is Chiyoko’s life as she gets closer to finding her lover and loses him over and over again.


Essentially, I’m in love with the upbeat flow that the soundtrack and the rapid transition of scenes produce, as well as the style and aesthetic of each design. I am also intrigued by the idea of squeezing the overall crux or theme of a film into a single scene — could it be successful elsewhere? I want to explore other films where this might happen.

