#perfect blue

[sammyahhhhh]

Blue Review Take Two: Electric Bluegaloo (August 9):

I think it's important to note that the critic's job is to have the least fun out of everyone watching the movie. This is a big deal when reviewing 'Perfect Blue', because I am forced to take a more holistic perspective than what the movie imagines it's scope to be. In this case, 'Perfect Blue' wants to be inexplicable. But I don't think movies have the right to be inexplicable. Read on Letterboxd

[lifffer]

Hay días perfectos. Donde no llueve (o quizás sí llueva). En los que se detiene el tiempo (o quizás no se detenga). Y sin querer, miraste al cielo. Y te diste cuenta que, era azul perfecto.

[dragomer]

Random Perfect Blue things I wanna share because I’m bored.

Me-Mania is canonically 180 cm tall or 5ft 11 inches

Early or unused designs for the Cham girls since these designs aren’t in the film

Virtual Mima in some unspecified location that doesn’t show up in the film.

I honestly can't count in feet and inches. I wonder what that location was supposed to be.

Thanks for the ask ^^

[anoirfruit]

Nikki x Mima?

[buggycat]

Guy with a dissociative disorder voice: tonight I am going to watch perfect blue going in completely blind! I sure hope nothing Affects Me

[sammyahhhhh]

Perfect Blue (1997) First Review Attempt

This movie actually irritates me a little bit because since there's no clean line of reality it's kind of difficult to discuss any themes that would come up analogically. And actually in general, because this movie specifically meant to be inexplicable, it did make my second watch of it like, unbearably frustrating.

The other side of that is, that if you're not rewatching it with the express purpose of understanding it, you will peacefully continue to be blindsided by this movie forever.

Anyway, with all that evasion of analogy --- ironically enough the meat of this movie rests heavily in it's stated reality. It's not representative, so when the reality of the film breaks, our reality breaks too. There's no kind of theme to hold onto throughout the fracturing, there's nothing for attentive viewers to make sense of: it's just insanity.

But the insanity is contextualized by the real insanity of Mima being unable to reconcile with the part of her that needs to be marketable--- both as a woman and a celebrity. There's no room for her to be an ordinary woman in the public eye, there's only the seductress (who's in control of what Mimarin determines "filthy") and the school girl. She doesn't mature --- she dies. And because Mima's private life becomes indistinguishable from her public by virtue of the internet, Mima doesn't mature --- she fractures. Satoshi Kon makes this beautifully literal.

I am not a fan of the way the movie associates beauty with morality --- even more so because I convinced myself that the movie was self-aware in this aspect on my first watch, and realized I was overestimating it on my second. For that reason, I'm kind of not a fan of the ending in general. All that brilliant, recursive, meta-at-times happening in the center of the film blandly concludes with "the ugly bitch wants to be famous" and the beautiful star remains a beautiful star. 

Mima does wink at the audience at the end, which maybe to those really off their rocker, might incentivize them to imagine that the entire movie was an internal fantasy of Mima's--- that the entire movie happens inside the head of a girl named Yoko Takakura, who was raped in a strip club, and unable to reconcile with the lack of control she had over what happened to her, imagines she chose to be an actress and consented to the scene. Yoko--- unable to maintain the fantasy of her control, as even in a fictional form the rape eats away at her --- begins to act out in defense of a version of herself that was never assaulted, as if to erase what happened. But the very act of killing is also contradictory to the "pure" identity, so her psyche redoes the take, casting different ugly people to project her misdeeds onto until her psyche can accept it. Finally, she imagines Rumi has done all the crimes, and the movie ends with Mima as a faultless celebrity --- a bad ending, the fantasy goes on. 

Some people in theory might imagine that. But unfortunately there is just no way to justify this take when looking at the text, wink or no wink. 

I like the ending I accidentally made up better though because I feel like the ending as-is kind of undermines the rest of the film. It's weird to me that this is all the fault of one person. The horror of simulacra/simulacrum is that we don't even notice when fiction uproots our framework for reality --- because we look around ourselves for reference of "what's normal," and all we see are fictional characters. As individuals we find it horrific but we also find ourselves to be part of it in one way or another. It's communal. We're all a part of it. We've all lost track of what's real and what's not. 

Anyway, cool movie. I'm comfortable agreeing this is one of the best animated, psychological, etc. etc. films of all time. Not that I'm a big movie person.

[lifffer]

Sólo la continuidad de la memoria genera la ilusión a la que llamamos ser.

[aleahhh-arts]

Mima from perfect blue