Cartoon Corner- Millenium Actress

Originally posted at the DL May 2016

Y'know, I feel like Kon is just showing off in this one in a way the other movies of his I've seen don't.



 There's a very cinematic quality to the way a lot of the framing and editing are done, especially the transitions between different settings.  It's appropriate to the movie of course, but I feel like the things he's doing with costume changes, setting swaps, and rapid shifts between them at certain points and the sense of shift in time and between reality and fantasy it creates have a small barb to them.
It kinda says "hey, other anime directors!  Do you even realize how hard this would be on film and how easy it is for us to do it?  Why aren't we trying harder to use the advantages of our medium here?  Step it up!"
Or maybe that's just me.

To an extent, Millennium Actress relies on the audience to add complexity to it, which is interesting.  Like... we get to see exactly once what this looks like from the outside, an old lady and a middle aged dude pantomiming their way through old movies and getting way to into it.  And that's the natural interpretation of it, so the movie makes a point to say "yeah, there's nothing unusual going on here", but it just invites you to make more of things than is there.  So you see each transition from era to era and the temptation to read entirely too much into everything just keeps gnawing at you.  Did Chiyoko actually bump into the Man with the Key when filming the samurai movie?  Is she losing her grip and remembering events from her movies as parallel to things that actually happened to her?  Is her memory and performance so captivating even the camera gets confused?
Well no, we just said those didn't happen.  Don't be silly~

But really the only word for it all is charming.  These are kind, interesting people.  They lead fascinating lives.  As the audience we just hope that maybe everyone can have a happy ending.  Isn't it a movie?
Not as such, no.

The run to Hokkaido is one of those perfect little film moments, where a single sequence captures the entire spirit of the film.  Granted it's like 7 minutes long in an 85 minute film but hey.  Hope turns to longing, longing turns to frustration, frustration turns to desperation, desperation turns to determination.  Determination turns to hope.
Chase after it.  A love you can never forget.

Rating- 8/10.  Satoshi Kon can pretty much sucker punch you in the feels whenever he damn well feels like, but he's so good about making sure he's earned it anyway, because he respects the artform and the audience.