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Satoshi Kon Month: Millennium Actress

In my Paprika review, I talked about director Satoshi Kon’s ability to explore the human condition through surreal art. Paprika was a masterpiece that deconstructed the human mind to create a psychological thriller like no other. Despite its exploration of the human mind however, something lacking from it, not to a fault mind you, but still rather noticeably is the element of human emotion. Fortunately his catalogue is not devoid of stories that tug at the heartstrings. If Paprika was his mindbender, “Millennium Actress” is undoubtedly his art house film, minus the pretention.

Chiyoko Fujiwara is a famous actress, now living her life as an old woman, retired and in seclusion. Aiming to create a documentary about her, film director Genya Tachibana tracks her down hoping to have a conversation with her for his film, leading to the telling of Chiyoko’s life story. Through the use of Chiyoko’s filmography to interpret specific events in her life, the film tells the story of Chiyoko’s life, starting from living in fascist pre-World War II era Japan as a teenager, where she encounters an artist running from the government and falls in love with him. His opposition to the government forces him to flee but when she realizes that he has left behind the key to his art supplies, she dedicates herself to tracking him down to return it and profess her love to him. In order to do this, she takes an offer by a director to for a lead role in his film which shoots in the location that the artist fled in, marking the start of her long career and journey to find him by using her job as an actress as a means to travel.

The movie is essentially a telling of Chiyoko’s life story, covering her growth from a teenage girl into a woman and detailing her search for the artist. Where the story takes a different turn however, it that story is not simply narrated through flashback but rather it uses cinematic settings, that are hinted to be films that Chiyoko has worked on, as an illustration of different points in her life and a representation of her own personal conflict within those moments. For example, when Chiyoko is being told to let go of her childish goals of finding her lost love, it’s done while shooting a drama in which the character she is playing struggles to grasp control of her own life and stop listening to her mother. When she is reunited with her love and he is taken into custody, the scene unfolds in a feudal era Japan complete with the arresting police depicted as samurai. Told in a very metafictional fashion, the film leaves you constantly guessing as to how to interpret the story unfolding on screen.

The film never deliberately tells you what is real, what is fictional, what is symbolic, or even if any of it is real in the first place. A room of three people can watch this film and come up with six different interpretations total, neither of them having any less credibility than the other.

“Millennium Actress” keeps you thinking throughout the course of its entire hour and a half run time, as you not only cheer Chiyoko on in her goal but hope and pray that wherever her journey takes her, she ends it being happy. I found myself emotionally invested in every second of the film from start to finish, holding my breath when it got suspenseful, being genuinely surprised at the twists and turns that the story makes and ultimately being nearly moved to tears at the heart wrenching final revelation of the ending.

Kon proves his understanding of the human condition with “Millennium Actress”. This film has instilled in me every possible emotion in the spectrum and my only regret is that it took me this long to discover its greatness.


10/10

Satoshi Kon Month: Paprika review

Before I begin discussion of the masterpiece that I have been treated to, I’m sure there is a good number of those reading this that have no idea who Satoshi Kon is, whether you’ve seen his work or not. To those people, I say, Google was created for a reason, so stop wallowing in ignorance, this review will still be here when you get back. For those too lazy to direct their browsers to the nearest search engine, Satoshi Kon was a Japanese writer, animator, and director that earned his fame for his stories that explored the nature of the human mind, presenting stories in such a fashion that required the viewer to actively analyze and sort out which events are real and which events are fabrications of the protagonist’s psyche. The more mainstream anime fan may have heard of his lone television series, “Paranoia Agent”. Unfortunately, after a battle with terminal pancreatic cancer, he passed away at the age of 46 years old in August of 2010. So in honor of the 6 month anniversary of his loss, what better way to celebrate his legacy by reviewing some of his most noteworthy work, starting with his last complete project and what in my opinion is his opus?


If there is one thing in modern day stories that I cannot stand, it is surrealism. For those unfamiliar with the term, surrealism is an artistic visual style reliant on surprise and unexpected imagery in order to convey some form of hidden meaning. I can appreciate it by all means when it’s done properly but my problem with it stems from the fact that it has become a crutch for more pretentious artists to fall back on. What was once a genuinely unique and offbeat way of conveying ideas has become a safety net for sequential artists and storytellers, that don’t know how to tell stories using sequential art. Anybody can do it but it can only be done right when talent is involved in making it happen. Keeping all of this in mind, I went into “Paprika” with my fair amount of reservations. After seeing some of Satoshi Kon’s previous work, I was put slightly at ease at the evidence that he was indeed capable of succeeding in accomplishing such a feat. However, no amount of faith that I had in his directing could have prepared me for the treat I was in for; a movie that seems to be constructed entirely around the concept I’m so critical of and yet so coherent that I was forced to think just as much about what I was watching during my viewing of the film as much as I was after it was said and done.

In the near future, advancements in technology have allowed the process of psychotherapy to be performed much more thoroughly. Through the use of an experimental device known as the DC Mini, users of the device can interact with others through their dreams, allowing them to peak into their subconscious and even persuade them to do things in the outside world. Unfortunately, a man with high connections takes advantage of this form of mind control, killing people within the company that produces the device that can stop his plans. This leaves Doctor Atsuko Chiba with the responsibility of unraveling the mystery of this secret hypnotist in the dreamscape through the use of her alter ego, a red haired manipulator of the dreamscape named Paprika.

As I’ve stated before, my problems with surrealism is that it rarely serves a purpose in the long run. If you’re going to rip me out of the story that I’m invested in to show me something odd, it better damn well contribute to something. “Paprika” has got to have some of the most psychedelic imagery that I’ve seen in quite some time; anthropomorphized objects, manipulating physics and space, and quite a few scenes of fetish and nightmare fuel alike that have been burned into my head. That said, I loved every second of it. The way that the film presents its dreamscape and seamlessly blends in its own set of physics gives you a clear distinction between what is reality and what takes place in the mind for the sake of story coherence, yet contains a slightly unsettling undertone that makes you feel that anything can happen at the most unexpected of times. It leaves the viewer wondering in the back of their minds what they’re actually watching but presents a traditional narrative that can still be viewed and followed clearly, making it just as powerful on its initial viewing as it is on all subsequent views. All of it is presented through crisp high quality animation that never ceases to be a treat to the eyes.

The characters however, are what make the story so compelling. The psychological issues studied by the film through each character that makes the dream setting so fascinating, such as a psychiatric patient that feels as though he’s failed his dead friend because of his failure to commit to a personal project and a doctors obsession with perfecting the DC Mini technology despite the dangers of the current predicament. The movie explores all of these issues using Paprika as a sort of guide for the audience to focus on and her fascinating and unpredictable nature of her makes her that much more endearing to watch. All of this is compounded by top quality voice acting, making it a terrific sci-fi drama regardless of its animated status.

This is the last film that Kon worked on before his death, dying in the middle of his next project, a movie called “The Dream Machine”. I can’t predict how well that film would have been and I’m curious to see what it will be like when the new production team brings it to fruition but had this been his final film, he would have went out with a bang. “Paprika” is one of the freshest, most thought provoking, and simply entertaining movies that I have seen in years and after renting it via Netflix, I intend to buy it the second I come into disposable income. I implore you all to celebrate his legacy by enjoying it and be sure to return sporadically throughout the month to see what else of his work you should look into.

10/10


I'd like to thank Imageshack (http://img147.imageshack.us/i/paprika.jpg/sr=1),  ADTR Wiki (http://www.adtrwiki.com/index.php?title=Paprika), and Girl Power Anime (http://girlpoweranime.blogspot.com/2010/08/paprika.html), for the images used in this review.