Millennium Actress

no copyright infringement intended
(http://dan42.com/millennium.actress/)

Maybe the greatest movie actress of Japan - some considered her the Century Actress - born at the beginning at the twenties, starting to play in her teens, spanning a prodigious career over three decades of movie history, to vanish at her peak! She gave weak reasons (or no reasons at all) for her decision to leave the public life; her anonymity has been total ever since.

Decades have passed, new generations of public came and little by little the great actress was forgotten. Of course, film critics are still mentioning her name when analyzing the movies of the forties and fifties; but they are talking at the past, as of a person who lived in a bygone era.

Has everybody forgotten her? No, of course not, there will be always people passionate for her movies and fascinated by her personality: people dreaming to find her and to tell her their fascination.

And here is the place where Sennen joyû (Millennium Actress) starts: a devoted fan succeeds to find her and she accepts to be interviewed by him. As they start talking, the past comes back in force and overwhelms the present. Scenes from all her movies, and what happened behind the scenes: she was playing the lead role, he was just a young assistant by then. The present is no more, their memories join in a unique flow. The old star and her fan live again the past, this time the meaning of those moments comes enriched: she is now aware of his presence on the plateau. Actually the past is not repeated: the force of their memories makes the past a continuous moment, time looses any significance. There is no more a succession of moments; there are only moments charged with emotional value, that remain forever.

Kon Satoshi is an Animé film director,which was fortunate for this movie, as he kept this way total control over the story and was able to blur past and present, life on the plateau and life outside it; more than that, he was able this way to change completely the image style of each reenacted scene in accordance to the specific period; Jidaigeki movies from the twenties and early thirties, propaganda movies from the period of Manchurian occupation, dramas from late forties and fifties, Sci-Fi movies from the sixties on. What resulted was a fascinating history of Japanese cinema in its most significant moments!

Is the feminine personage in the movie an allusion to Setusko Hara? The director did not confirm this suggestion. Nevertheless I would say yes, for many reasons, the main reason being that for me it is only Setsuko Hara who deserves to be named the Millennium Actress.

I would like to dedicate this post to Yoko Shibata. She is a young Japanese video artist, passionate of the movies with Setsuko Hara, and of all great Japanese cinema.



(Kon Satoshi)

(The Thousand faces of HANAFUBUKI)