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| Taken from ew.com |
Perfect Blue is a movie that can be hard to follow and confusing on what is real, and what is a dream. Perfect Blue is a movie inside a movie, and the plotline of both movies are very similar, which aides in the confusion of reality and the fiction of the TV-movie, Double Bind. Mima is from a small town, but she moved to Tokyo to peruse her lifelong dream of becoming a pop idol. She was happy in the beginning, but the group she was in, Cham, never made it in the Top 100 billboard. Mima wanted to be more well known, and make more money, so she switched to acting. Her desire to be seen by a wider audience caused her to be desperate for any role, which brought her to perform a rape scene in Double Bind. The scene, even though it was fake, was still very traumatic for her to do. I believe that scene was the breaking point for her. After that scene, her personality changes from the innocent pop idol into a desperate actress trying to please everyone, the men, by willingly taking off her clothes, and posing for pornographic pictures. She loses her image of herself because of a website that seems to know all her thoughts and feelings, and daily habits. She buys a computer, which exposes her to the fact that her life is not as private as she thought it was. Her assistant, Rumi, is unintentionally helping the breakdown of her mind. Rumi has multiple personality disorder, which developed when Mima did the rape scene in the movie. Rumi’s other personality is the pop idol version of Mima. Mima sees the pop idol version of Rumi and thinks it is herself. She freaks out every time she sees Rumi and believes she is losing her mind. Rumi kills the men who are responsible for Mima’s tarnished image, and the murders very closely mirror the murders in Double Bind, so Mima thinks she is the one committing the murders. When she finds out Rumi is the one committing the murders, she realizes she is not losing her mind and is able to move on.
This is a film so deep, so compelling, so artfully told that it should convince anybody that being a nerd to be an Otaku. This is about as adult as an anime can get — and I mean that not in terms of explicitness, but in terms of the adultness of its ideas and methods.
ReplyDeleteTeenagers and adults can sit in front of this. I just mean to say that, when they do, they will feel as if their intelligence as a viewer is being respected, and they are not being pandered to or talked down to. This is that path that most movies and videogames are taking these days. “Mega man! Mega man! Jump and Shoot!”
In short, it is about psychological destruction. Mima is a pop idol with severe doubts about her world as well as her mind. And the farther along the film goes, the more complex and layered the storytelling gets. We begin to question the things that made us question the other things... and from several angles at once. To say anything further would be to rob you of the numerous, complex, and often subtle turns this film has. Basically you should just watch this. It's one of the few movies that actually expands what a genre is capable of.
Reading your blog made the movie make more sense to me. Mima did indeed leave Cham to get more popular, thus get a bigger fan base. She did also start to have an unstable identity when she did the rape scene. This rape scene came right before the scene when her fish died. When her fish died it basically proved to her that her image was truly falling apart and that is when she really started freaking out about her identity. Definitely this psychological idea is meant for a more mature audience. It was even hard for us to understand it at first and we are teenagers/ young adults. Younger people would definitely not understand what is going on and why these things are happening. Also, they wouldn’t be able to see the mirroring of the Perfect Blue and Double Bind. It even took me some time to figure out that the two movies were basically mirroring each other. I enjoyed reading your blog, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteYou summary on Perfect Blue was great, as always. I really enjoy reading your views of the different movies. Every time I read you blog, they seem really well written and thoroughly done. But, I have to wonder, what did you think of Mima? Did you like her character? Was it hard to relate with her character throughout the movie. I know it was for me, because of how confusing everything was with all the illusions and whatnot. Did you think she should’ve left singing for acting? Do you think she should have said no to the rape scene? Did you honestly think that Rumi had the best intentions for Mima in the beginning, before you found everything out? Did you think the movie was really graphic? And, sorry for all the questions, but did you like the movie? This honestly was not my most favorite movie that we’ve watched so far, but it was alright.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I almost chose that exact same pictures, hehe!