(Spoiler Alert!) Millennium Actress: A LifeLong Pursuit

A lifelong pursuit is perhaps the shortest but precise summary for Millennium Actress. It depicts the life of Chiyoko Fujiwara as a parallel to her acting career, which are somewhat similar to each other with one ultimate goal–to seek someone she wishes to return an item to. A fate that begins in her adolescence, and continues till the end of her life. Film director Satoshi Kon perfectly expresses the feeling of surrealism of Millennium Actress through the form of anime and seamless transitions that blurs Chiyoko’s life into a masterpiece of art that is filled with joy, challenges, sorrow, grief and hopes. It is a story about love, motivation,  self-growth, and a revisit back to Japanese history in the 1900s, where wars and propagandas were forms of normality.

 

Millennium Actress holds a rather simple plot. However, the art form and storyline is as fruitful as a dish of deliciousness, full of content and satisfying texture. Following the chronological timeline of Millennium Actress, the story's protagonist, Chiyoko Fujiwara is given birth on the day of the Great Kanto earthquake (Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake); a day that also marks the ending of her father’s life. Japan, having suffered from the loss of 140,000 lives and two major cities, enters into a depression state. Only three years after the earthquake, Japan’s emperor of the Taisho era died  in 1926; The country officially welcomed the coming of Showa era and the new emperor Hirohito, whose enthronement rituals were seen as a foreshadowing of chauvinistic nationalism. Large amounts of money were invested into making the enthronement happen, but for Japan at the time, the spending was beyond its low budget; Japan’s economy after the Hirohito’s enthronement worsened. People were more devastated, Japan continued lacking necessary resources, and soon the pre-war era arrived.

During Chiyoko’s youth, she describes the world around her as “a turbulent and dangerous place.” A country that is all in chasing for national benefits and extreme ideologies. Propagandas about war are posted along with posters that emphasize self-sacrifice and devotion for Japan. People whose actions conflict with the trending belief would be seen as traitors–even persecuted to death.

Obedience, perseverance, deindividualize, Chiyoko grows under such an environment where her life is to pursue what the country pursues. Even when the Ginei Studio scout wants to hire Chiyoko as a young actor, he emphasizes the amount of benefits it would produce for her mother nation. While on scout’s side, Chiyoko is able to contribute to Japan as an actor, Chiyoko’s mother is against his idea and thinks that becoming a housewife is the correct way for a woman to dedicate herself for her country; Chiyoko feels hesitant at the same time lost with the two options given to her. She leaves both her mother and the scout in the room with their argument as she goes out for a walk on snowy streets, and throws snowballs onto walls as a release of her emotions. 

The color of red appears obvious and attractive for sights in the snow. The red brick wall, the Japanese flag, the propagandas. Almost everything else is in a tone of black of white, even Chiyoko’s red-pink scarf loses its saturation and gains the color of limestone statues. She is rather alone and depressed. As Chiyoko continues walking down the neighborhood she is pushed by a man from behind, who is in a hurry escaping the pursuit of the Japanese Government. Out of sudden urge, Chiyoko decides to help him. 

The man is placed inside of Chiyoko’s family storage house to avoid being discovered. Only at night times Chiyoko sneaks into the storage house, bandages his injuries, and listens to his stories. The man explains his identity as a painter, as he carries a rectangular shaped canvas covered by a black sheet, and a box of painting tools. He wish, that when peace comes, he is able to finish his painting back in his hometown Hokkaido during its heavy winter. But before such time may come, the man wishes to go to his friends who are currently fighting in Manchuria; he has to leave Chiyoko’s house. He promises Chiyoko that once the turbulence in their country ends, he will invite her to Hokkaido to express his gratitude toward her kindness. Their conversation continues on, and the topic turns to the man’s key necklace. “It is a key that opens something important.” Explained by the man. Upon observing his locked paint box, Chiyoko is completely aware of what the “important thing” the man implies. Still, she makes a promise with the man in giving her a day of time to guess what the key is for. Except she is never able to tell him the answer as the Japanese government eventually discovers traces of the man, and the man has no choice but to take his leave early; he accidentally drops his key while attempting to escape on a train going in the direction of Manchuria. Despite knowing the difficulty for her to meet the man again, Chiyoko still wants to keep their promise. She wears the key that the man dropped and says to the faraway train: “I will go…I will go to you!” Thus Chiyoko’s journey into fulfilling her promise with the man begins. Or should we say, at this point, we are finishing the ending of one of Chiyoko’s films. 

The intriguing part about Millennium Actress is predictably known for its surrealism, as I have touched on a little bit at the beginning of this blog. For audiences who are familiar with Satoshi Kon’s other work of films, such as Paprika and Perfect Blue, the immersion of reality and none-real world are applied by Kon in a way that only anime can reproduce the same stunning effect; the seamlessness of the transitions in Paprika, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress always leave me speechless, at the same time paying more respect to Kon’s creativity. Back to Millennium Actress, when we perhaps are watching Chiyoko’s story of her life, we are unsure whether or not we are seeing just other cinema films she participates in. Because in both her films and life, she is always pursuing the man, wishing to return his key to him. 

My immature writing on Millennium Actress is, and never will be able to express the fascinating visuals that this film brings us. The parallelity of Chiyoko’s career and life is not only a proof of her determination to find the man again, but that the pursuit of him also means significantly to the building of her own character. As Chiyoko states at the end of the film, maybe the man isn’t what matters on her journey. Because at the end of the day, what she really “likes is the pursuit of him.” 

 

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(Spoiler Alert!) Millennium Actress: A LifeLong Pursuit – PereCreate