There is a Japanese director who is world-famous for his unique visual style and profound ideological connotations. His works often break the boundaries between reality and fantasy, explore complex themes such as human nature, time and memory, and go beyond the narrative framework of traditional animation. His name is Satoshi Kon, and his representative works include the well-known "Paprika", "Millennium Actress" and "Perfect Blue". The name of Satoshi Kon is shining. In Japan, where there are many talented people in the animation industry, he can be called a genius among geniuses! It's a pity that he died young, leaving the world with only 4 amazing feature films that people continue to learn and appreciate, as well as the animation industry or the entire film and television industry.
In this article, I mainly want to talk about a work I watched several years ago and was deeply moved by, Perfect Blue. To be honest, I thought about it for a long time and didn't know where to start or how to describe or share my personal shallow views on this work.
"Perfect Blue" is more like a show of skill. Just like British director Nolan, Kon Satoshi plays with the narrative structure, allowing the audience to wander between the illusion of reality and the play within the play, while expressing the inner struggle of Perfect Blue from an idol to an actor with tension. The reason why "Perfect Blue" is difficult to understand is that it seamlessly edits and splices Mima's illusion, reality, and the play within the play together. If you want to understand the whole story, you have to distinguish the scenes in the film from these three. In the first half of the film, the boundary between reality and drama is relatively clear. The watershed is that Mima accepts the psychological contradiction formed by filming the rape scene and the psychological pressure caused by the bad fanatic fans, which makes her have another illusion of Perfect Blue.
Mima was a member of a girl group at the beginning. But she gradually wanted to become an actress and explore new routes. Mima announced this at the last concert, but what Mima didn't expect was that her life would gradually become weird. After Mima returned home, she first received a silent phone call, and then received a fax. Mima was creepy and realized that her life seemed to be under surveillance. The weird atmosphere became more and more intense. Mima discovered a website called "Mima's Room" at this time. This website naturally records every bit related to Mima. The content recorded is so detailed that it records clearly which subway station Mima stepped out of with her left foot and what brand of milk she bought on which day.
Who is this?
The weird atmosphere makes Mima's mood more and more complicated, and whether it is the right choice to change from an idol to an actor halfway through her career also brings great pressure to Mima. At the same time, the former group is developing better and better, but Mima's acting career is confused. Mima doesn't say it, but her heart has quietly changed. So, when the agent asked Mima to play an exposed rape scene, even though the assistant was very angry, Mima agreed.
When it came time to shoot, Mima went ahead with it. What’s sad is that this rape scene far exceeded the agent’s expectations. Even the male agent who actively supported Mima’s career change almost couldn’t bear to watch it, and the female agent Rumi even burst into tears on the spot. Throughout the whole movie, this plot can be said to be the turning point of the whole movie. It not only affected Mima to a great extent, but also affected the female agent Rumi. According to the above character images, Rumi cares about Mima, and this care is not only from an elder and a partner, but also from a sense of resonance with Mima’s experience. Maybe from the beginning, Rumi saw her own shadow in this girl who came to Tokyo to pursue her dreams, and unconsciously overlapped her with herself who was once obsessed with being an idol. She planted the seeds in her heart to realize the idol dream for this girl, and now, at this moment, the seeds were completely wiped out in the soil, so they began to stink and rot.
Mima seemed unaffected by the rape scene, but when she got home she smashed everything and cried loudly on the bed. After that, Mima began to lead a double life. In the eyes of others, she was a strong and confident new actress, but secretly she felt sad and helpless, and even began to seek a sense of existence on the perverted website "Mima's Room". This time, the fantasy was no longer a blurred shot, but a portrait, suggesting the intensification of her inner contradictions and divisions. The heavy pressure has caused Mima to become confused.
But things are not that simple. Weird comments appeared on the website of "Mima's Room", where Mima claimed that she was forced to shoot the rape scene. These comments were seen by Mima's fanatical fans. A few days later, the screenwriter of the rape scene received death threats in the underground parking lot and was killed.
Later, Mima became a "stripper" and was printed in magazines and widely circulated. Fanatic fans were furious and bought all the magazines home. Then he received a letter from "Mima" on the website, in which Mima said that the current Mima was a fake Mima. Only when the fanatic fans helped him get rid of her, the original Mima who loved singing and dancing would reappear.
On the other hand, Mima's hallucinations are getting worse and worse, and she can't tell the difference between reality and hallucination. She can't remember the assistant she just met yesterday, and she can't tell whether what she experienced is real. Sometimes, only through the records of "Mima's Room" can she know what she has done. Now Mima's personality has been basically completely split, and her spirit is extremely unstable. Correspondingly, the combination of real and fake shots in the movie is also intensive from now on. However, unlike the rape scene, this time the movie deliberately did not give Rumi any shots. According to the my speculation, the movie deliberately concealed the fact that Rumi was deeply hit by the photo incident, that is, it concealed Rumi's further changes. It should be from now on that Rumi really imagined herself as the idol Mima. In a trance, she dreamed that she killed the photographer who took nude photos for her. But after waking up, she received a call and the photographer was indeed dead. Mima woke up from her dream again. But this time she was filming on the set again.
Which scene is real?
Mima met a fanatic fan in the corridor, and the fanatic fan wanted to kill Mima. Mima knocked him unconscious, and was so scared that her face was full of tears. But the next second, the lights around her lit up, and she was actually on the set. Mima returned to the corridor and met the assistant. When Mima took the assistant to see the scene just now, she found that the man was gone. At the same time, in another place, we saw the bodies of the fanatic fan and the agent.
This mess was not the first time that Mima sat in the assistant's car and closed her eyes tiredly. When she opened her eyes, she had returned home.
But, it's not right! Mima's goldfish should be dead, and the posters on the wall should be took down, but they are all there in this room.
Mima lifted the curtains and found that this was not her home at all. The idol Mima came out of the bathroom and showed Mima her new clothes. But that was not the idol Mima at all, but Rumi in the performance clothes. She decided to kill Mima and then become Mima herself. After a chase and fight, Mima and Rumi rolled on the street and were hit by a car.
At the end of the movie, Rumi received psychiatric treatment in the hospital, but most of the time she still thought she was Mima. Time has passed for many years, and Mima now looks like a successful person. But she still did not forget to visit Rumi. Because for Mima, the name Rumi not only represents the agent who cares about her, but also symbolizes herself who once worked hard to become an idol. The sentence "Thanks to her, I am now who I am now" not only highlights Mima's kindness, but also highlights her growth. Now she will not deny and oppose her past self, but is grateful to the little girl who has been working hard. It really makes Mima feel relieved to see Mima go through so much pain.
"I am the real Mima!"
"Perfect Blue" tells a story about schizophrenia, but the wonderful thing is that it tells the story of schizophrenia of three people at the same time. One is Mima. One is Rumi. The other is Yoko, the heroine of the movie "Double Entanglement" starring Mima. The three stories are linked together, and the use of multiple flashbacks makes the audience miss the real timeline, making the plot unexpected. In addition, the movie often uses similar action and image’s conversion shots to achieve a real and illusory effect.
When the genius Satoshi Kon was making "Perfect Blue", the theme he wanted to explore was "Who am I?"
Mima's hesitation between idol and actor, and the assistant's split between dream and reality, are all to confirm this theme. In the end, Mima said "I am the real Mima", in fact, the director also wanted to point out that Mima still has a long way to go on the road of exploring herself. From this, it can be inferred that the person who killed the photographer and the agent in the movie should be the assistant. The bloody shirt that Mima saw in her room was just an illusion. But what's interesting is that after the movie was released, the audience had another interpretation. Because Mima's last words "I am the real Mima!" are really terrifying when you think about it carefully.