Millennium Actress 4K - Chasing a Dream Beyond Time

Chiyoko Fujiwara has spent her life chasing a man. No matter how many times fate seems to intervene, she continues to search for him, even as the years transform the memory into something increasingly distant. It is from this obsession that Satoshi Kon constructs Millennium Actress, a film in which time seems to have no rules.

It all begins many years after the actress's retirement, when Genya Tachibana arrives at her house with an old key. That object alone is enough to reopen a door that has been closed for too long. From that moment, the story gains speed and Chiyoko returns to being a girl, an actress, a woman in love, traversing eras without ever truly stopping.

When Cinema Enters Life

The most fascinating idea from director Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers, Perfect Blue, Paprika) is that Chiyoko's memories are not confined to her biography. The images from the films she starred in throughout her career intertwine with what she lived, to the point where it becomes useless to seek a precise boundary between reality and fantasy.

And as she continues to run towards that never-fulfilled encounter, the viewer is also drawn into her search. Millennium Actress thus becomes a story about desire and memory, but above all about the need to continue chasing what we have lost.

It is a melancholic, surprising film, still capable of disorienting many years after its release in Japanese cinemas. Above all, it demonstrates how well Satoshi Kon can tell deeply human feelings using the language of animation with truly rare freedom.

Native 35mm material (as reported by IMDB, editor's note), original image format 1.85:1 (3840 x 2160/24p), HEVC encoding on BD-66 dual layer. Extremely solid transfer with a high average bitrate, substantial material despite the choice not to offer even HDR-10. That said, the overall image quality remains remarkable and consistent, allowing for a richer picture compared to the 2K Blu-ray counterpart, included here on BD-50.

The difference is not such as to suddenly render the latter obsolete: the high-definition master already started from an excellent base. The new transfer adds greater consistency in details and provides an even more robust image, with virtually impeccable encoding.

Even the most dynamic sequences never challenge the encoding, which maintains a stable and clean rendition. A restoration effort for Kon's work, capable of enhancing it despite the choice of Standard Dynamic Range (SDR).

On the audio front, both discs feature DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Japanese (with mandatory subs) and Italian (both 24 bit) tracks, providing quality lossless listening. The rendition is particularly clean and precise, with a level of detail that allows the soundtrack to retain all its richness. The surround mix makes good use of spatiality without sacrificing the clarity of musical elements, while the score gains body and dynamics. Audio tracks that appear very well-crafted and capable of effectively accompanying the quality of the new video transfer.

As extras: 42-minute making-of tracing the production of the work from the story concept, with numerous interviews and the involvement of the director himself; a recent interview with producer Taro Maki 18 years after the production (8'); interview with producer Masao Maruyama (32'). Finally, teaser, trailer, and Italian trailer (with Italian subtitles). O-Card cardboard box, amaray which includes an exclusive postcard and a booklet with textual insights by Jonathan Clemens and Andrew Osmond.