The beauty of Millennium Actress. All images courtesy of Go Fish Pictures.

Millennium Actress, one of the best animated features of the new millennium (and likely to remain so, no matter how many more are produced during the next 997 years) has finally come to American theaters — although in a release so limited that you will miss it if you blink.

Millennium Actress (Sennen Joyu) is the second critically acclaimed/anime fan favorite theatrical animated feature created by artist/writer/director Satoshi Kon and screenwriter Sadayuki Murai, produced by Tokyo’s Madhouse studio (best known for Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and some of the sequences in The Animatrix). Their first was the 1997 Perfect Blue, a murder mystery that was likened to an animated Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

Millennium Actress has superficial similarities: Kon’s distinctive art style; a mystery set within Japan’s cinematic industry; and a surrealistic viewpoint from inside the heroine’s mind. But where Perfect Blue emphasized a nightmarish paranoia to make both the heroine and the audience wonder whether she has become a psychotic killer, Millennium Actress is a more benign look into a retired actress’ bittersweet memories. If Perfect Blue is comparable to Hitchcock, then Millennium Actress is similar to James Cameron’s Titanic, as an elderly woman’s flashback of romantic reminiscences, which are so vivid they draw her audience back into the past with her.

Artist, writer and director Satoshi Kon.

It starts with a sci-fi scene very like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but featuring a female astronaut. This turns out to be from a movie being watched by Genya Tachibana, a middle-aged independent documentary filmmaker. It was the final feature made by Chiyoko Fujiwara, Japan’s greatest actress from the 1930s until the late 1960s when she abruptly vanished into seclusion. Now, 30 years later, Chiyoko’s old studio has hired Genya to produce a documentary about her. Genya and his brash young cameraman Kyoji Ida track her down and persuade her to give them a personal interview.

As the frail but gracious Chiyoko relives her past, Genya and Kyoji become supporting characters in her memories. These present both a behind-the-scenes look at the Japanese movie industry of this period, and the individual features in which she starred. Viewers “in the know” will recognize pastiches of Japan’s greatest films from Throne of Blood to Godzilla, although they work equally well as an enjoyable sampler of Japanese movie genres for viewers who do not know the specific films.

From space to feudal Japan, the film is a tour-de-force of places and eras.

Regarding Chiyoko’s personal story, it turns out that Genya had met her as a bashful teen assistant on the studio lot just before her final film. He still has a puppy-love crush on her; and although it is not necessary for his documentary, he wants to know the secret of what drove Chiyoko into hiding so long ago.

Filming Millennium Actress in detailed 2D animation, rather than live-action, permits a more seamless transition through the scenes from the “real present” to the “real past” to the often jarring contrast of Chiyoko’s different movie roles. (Animation also enables the monsters and sets in the sci-fi movies to look more realistic than the actual ‘50s and ‘60s live-action movies ever did.) This becomes an intellectual puzzle as Genya and Kyoji gradually realize that Chiyoko’s memories may be more romantically enhanced than what really happened, and they must consciously separate the truth from her idealized view of reality.