Retrospective: Millennium Actress (Patreon)

After his technically impressive but slightly daft directorial debut, Satoshi Kon comes into his own with his second movie. Millennium Actress deserves to be ranked among the best Japanese films, including Ugetsu, High and Low, Tokyo Story, and Harakiri. The movie begins as an elegy for 20th Century Japanese cinema — possibly the medium's finest body of work — and only gets more interesting from there. Satoshi Kon's death was a tragedy for many reasons, but prominent among them is that he didn't live to see more generations loving his work.

We experience the history of 20th Century Japan through the eyes of one actress, who is equal parts Setsuko Hara (the most beautiful woman ever to live) and Hideko Takamine. Two documentary filmmakers who come to interview find themselves living through history and cinema as they become supporting characters in her story. Suddenly they're in a Yasujirō Ozu film; now they're in Godzilla. The actress chases her love, a man whose name she does not know, through history and cinema. As the rise of Japanese nationalism and the demands of her industry distract her from her quest, she tries to focus on that dissident she helped one day. Sad yet often hilarious, Millennium Actress is as good as Japanese art gets; a worthy sign-off for the Century. All's well; Twentieth Century dies.