Millennium Actress

I'm tired and I've written like sixty essays today (or it seems like that anyway) so this will be brief. Not that it could really be a long review, because there's not a lot to write about. Actually, there is plenty to write about, but I would either need to be very sparing or extremely detailed because there's no easy halfway point at which to draw the line of description. If that makes any sense to anyone, that is. So this movie is about an aged Actress who tells her life's story to two documentary filmmakers and in doing so they are whisked back through the years as her memories, the movies she made, and the present time are combined into a postmodern story that winds up being a lot more simple than it originally seems. Not that simple is bad, in fact by the end simple works really well. It's a love story, of course, but it's not your usual love story. The girl who would grow up to become the Actress was given a key by a runaway boy in hiding from the government. She more or less spends her whole life trying to find him to return the key, and this search for her true love is mirrored in the movies she makes and in the surreal story arch of this movie itself. Anyway, the back of the box compares it to the likes of "Spirited Away," a movie I haven't done, but need to, a review on one of these days, if only for my own benefit (as most of these really are). It is not as good as "Spirited Away" but that movie set the bar so incredibly high that I don't think it will be any time soon we see its equal. All that said, Millennium Actress is a good movie on its own terms and while I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who does not already appreciate anime, for those who do they will probably find a few things, if not many, to enjoy here.

B+