While our lives occur in a linear fashion, memory recollection tends to be relatively disordered. In Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon, 2001), Kon represents memory in the film with a unique anime twist. The film depicts a recreation of memories from a retired famous actresses ' life to two documentary filmmakers. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that her retelling blends the plots of the movies she starred in with personal details of her own life, presenting to the filmmakers a more emotional and personal retelling of her life rather than a literal, chronological one. The selected sequence displays Kon 's use of animetism, open compositing, and continuity editing to portray the nonlinear nature of memory in a manner possible only …show more content…
Some transitions are quite smooth and relatively easy to follow, such as the dissolve between the shot of Chiyoko with an umbrella on a horse-drawn carriage and the shot where Genya pulls her in a carriage. A wheel is also included as a separate dissolving layer, contributing to the motif throughout the film of the witch 's wheel, cursing Chiyoko to chase her eternal love with no success. Furthermore, it contributes to the sense of movement as Chiyoko alternates through various modes of transportation in her chase, as well as providing a graphic match transition as it fades into the umbrella she holds in the latter shot. A harsher example of editing occurs when Genya stumbles while pulling the carriage, falling as the carriage speeds over him. As the eye-line match cuts back to Chiyoko, the viewer is again introduced to another different set of wardrobe, scenery, and especially in this shot--colour palette. In this sequence, Kon has a tendency to keep the continuity editing to a minimum, allowing the viewer to follow the movement of Chiyoko as a subject while changing almost everything