Montage Editing In Millennium Actress
Montage Editing in Millennium Actress Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress takes the viewer on a visual journey that blends reality, fantasy and history as Chiyoko searches for her lost love. Her quest to find this man spans across decades and manifests itself not only in her everyday life but also in the films she has appeared in. Kon uses masterful editing to create both a visually stunning film and a feature that formally reinforces the themes that are presented. Specifically, the use of montage editing blurs the line between fantasy and reality and makes the viewer question Chiyoko’s own identity. In its simplest form, montage is an editing technique in which objects and figures are linked to create particular ideas or effects. The term
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Chiyoko’s personal history is intertwined with Japan’s history, this is tonal montage. Because this sequence contains metric, rhythmic and tonal montage, we would call it an overtonal montage. Intellectual montage works much differently from Eisenstein’s first four categories. Individual shots in intellectual montage do not contain meaning by themselves. However, when combined with other shots in the montage the juxtaposition of these unrelated shots creates meaning (82-83). In the scene where Chiyoko races to find her love after receiving the note, she appears racing in scenes from films she starred in. The effect of this combination suggests Chiyoko’s search for her love is just another tragic love story commonly seen in film. However, it also suggests that Chiyoko is not one person, but many. In Eisenstein’s Film Form he writes, “Montage describes conflicts between an object and its dimension, and conflicts between an event and its duration” (77). This definition describes Kon’s storytelling style very accurately. Chiyoko defies both time and space as she embodies characters who make up the core of her very being, despite when, where, and how they appear. Chiyoko is both the formal and narrative element in the film that unites reality, fantasy, and history in the same
Chiyoko’s personal history is intertwined with Japan’s history, this is tonal montage. Because this sequence contains metric, rhythmic and tonal montage, we would call it an overtonal montage. Intellectual montage works much differently from Eisenstein’s first four categories. Individual shots in intellectual montage do not contain meaning by themselves. However, when combined with other shots in the montage the juxtaposition of these unrelated shots creates meaning (82-83). In the scene where Chiyoko races to find her love after receiving the note, she appears racing in scenes from films she starred in. The effect of this combination suggests Chiyoko’s search for her love is just another tragic love story commonly seen in film. However, it also suggests that Chiyoko is not one person, but many. In Eisenstein’s Film Form he writes, “Montage describes conflicts between an object and its dimension, and conflicts between an event and its duration” (77). This definition describes Kon’s storytelling style very accurately. Chiyoko defies both time and space as she embodies characters who make up the core of her very being, despite when, where, and how they appear. Chiyoko is both the formal and narrative element in the film that unites reality, fantasy, and history in the same