Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress (2002) is Satoshi Kon's second feature, and it deliberately dissolves the wall between what is remembered and what was filmed. A documentary maker tracks down Chiyoko, a legendary actress who vanished at the height of her career, and brings her a key she lost decades earlier. She begins telling her life, and as she talks her memories and the films she starred in start bleeding into each other. Here is what Kon does. A scene begins in feudal Japan, cuts to nothing and continues in the war years, then continues again on a spacecraft. The documentarian himself keeps appearing inside her memories. The film never tells you which layer you are in and never needs to. The subject is not a love story, it is pursuit itself. Chiyoko spends a lifetime looking for one man, and by the end what that means has turned inside out. Darren Aronofsky has said openly that this film's editing influenced him. It runs 87 minutes. Good for: anime, art cinema, and films built on dream logic. Less good for: anyone wanting a linear story will get lost. Do not expect action either. This is entirely a journey through memory.