It took me a long while to come up with any thing substantial to say after I finished watching Millennium Actress, I was overwhelmed and happy and sad all at the same time at a complete loss of words.

Going into this movie I though it would be a sad and melancholy tale of an old actress, Chiyoko Fujiwara who had been out of work and public eye for over 30 years, but soon I realized I was watching it with a wide smile on my face. We learn that the interviewer who found a key which belonged to someone, a painter who was the entire reason Chiyoko started her acting career hoping to find this man.

I was taken in completely by it's joyous energy there's a sense of longing in Chiyoko as she wants to find the man who the key she got from all those years ago belongs to. But the way she tells the story seems to be a joyous celebration of her roles in movies as well, her journey takes her through different ages in both her life and her movies, cutting seamlessly between her own life and the movie's story. And I mean that was her life too wasn't it. The interviewer as the fan who has memorised all the movies and her remembering her old roles and then performing together energetically just filled my heart with a warm and happy feeling.

As the story goes on seamlessly cutting between eras, reality it feels like it's not just the interviewer who goes on a journey but me as the audience as well, my feelings and thoughts sometimes reflected in the perspective of the cameraman who is neither a fan nor the star. It feels like the movie itself is glad that others might connect with it a celebration of this connection between audience and media. And on top of it there's the music that seems to fuse the different time and space the movie showcases into a consistent flow where any movie Chiyoko was in or anytime of her life my emotions felt like they were swelling to the tune, when she runs to find the man with the key I want her to run and find that man.

She kept working on movies hoping that one day the man would watch one of them, but she never actually meets him, eventually she is haunted by the realization that she isn't the girl who fell in love with the painter, and she leaves her life as an actress behind, we learn that the man died long ago.

In the end it wasn't about finding the man with the key, it's about not being stuck that key opens up for her possibilities to go beyond what her mother wanted for her, to not get stuck in her life ,the meeting was never meant to happen but it gave her a simple and pure motivation to keep with the industry, in a weird way her inescapable cycle of trying to find the man and always failing is what gave her the freedom, in continuously running, striving to move forward ,free and its beautiful.

Ending with a powerful line, the movie left me and I was glad that I watched movies.