The name Jinmin flashed. In Japan, where there are many talents in the animation industry, he can also be called a genius among geniuses!
August 24 this year marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Japanese animation film master Director Toshi Kon. Taiwan will also re-release the feature film debut of director Jin Min, "The House of Unma" in theaters as a commemoration.
As a cartoon director, Jin Min has not many works. There are only four feature films such as "The House of Mima", "Millennium Actress", "The Godfather of Tokyo", "Red Pepper", and a drama "The Delusional Agent". However, each of these four animated feature films is a highly talented classic!
Katsuhiro Katsuhiro Otomo, Mamoru Oshii, Hayao Miyazaki and other Japanese animation masters are different from the animations of Konto. All of his works are oriented towards adults. The characters either shuttle between weird dreams and vague reality ("Unma's House", "Red Pepper"), or incarnate different film and television images through millennia to pursue old dreams ("Millennium Actress") "), or a few strange fringe people walking in the blurred metropolis of Tokyo with a baby ("The Godfather of Tokyo")...their imagination, bold and profound criticism of reality, and the essence of the world and the hearts of the people Excavating and presenting, let the audience be happy and fearful: what they like is that these cartoons are exquisite and exquisite, the narrative is smooth, and the story goes back and forth; what is feared is that the theme is profound and directs people’s hearts, listening to thunder in a silent place, after watching the movie , I often feel that the blue sky and white sun in the real world suddenly become cloudy and uncertain, and I wonder if it is Zhuang Sheng’s Dream Butterfly or Zhuang Sheng’s Butterfly...There are really few cartoons that have such a fascinating and thrilling charm!
The so-called debut is the pinnacle, and Jin Min's debut novel "The House of Unma" has already brought its characteristics to the fullest. The first half of the film is just a story of a newcomer in the entertainment industry trying to transform from an idol to an actor and encountering strange fan harassment. As the story progresses, the protagonist Wei Ma gets into an illusion more and more. It seems that he has become a divisive doll, and every move is controlled by others.
Jin Min admits that "The House of Wei Ma" is a difficult cartoon. Its themes and intentions are very rich.
First of all, the film shows the idol-fan relationship in the entertainment circle through the artist Wei Ma, the outdated star Liu Mei who has become an agent, and Wei Ma’s fan horse face stranger: Liu Mei controls the extreme fan horse face by playing Wei Ma. The agency also used the name of “cultivating celebrities” to allow Wei Ma to take large-scale rape scenes and shoot nude photos-this is essentially the consumption and control of artists; extreme fans use tracking, threats, and building websites Expose the artist’s privacy and other means to exercise spiritual control and moral kidnapping of the artist. Economic companies/producers, artists, and fans have formed a complex ring, relying on each other and controlling each other. As a result, human nature is lost, distorted, and turned into a certain social symbol, becoming a vassal of capital or others. As an animation work 23 years ago, I have to say that its understanding is profound and advanced.
The film also involves multiple personalities and people's role-playing issues. Liu was once an idol artist in the United States. She could only become an agent when she was old and frail. She longed to play the role of Wei Ma and re-experience the feeling of becoming a popular idol. As a result, Liumei's personality is split and he thinks he is the real Weima, but in reality Weima has given up his idol status and gradually becomes the object Liumei wants to eliminate. At the same time, the transformation actor Wei Ma also faces the trouble of double life: she still wants to sing in her heart, but in reality she can only continue to receive large-scale film and television works. The spiritual world is constantly being squeezed and invaded, and finally close to collapse. edge. In the entertainment industry, celebrities/idols are originally played out and have a virtual image. Wei Ma is constantly struggling between her false appearance and her true heart, and she is at a loss as to what to do.
"The House of Wei Ma" shows the multiple personalities of the characters in the form of a large number of in-plays. For example, at the beginning of the film, it was a fan meeting: a live performance of the TV series "Computer Warrior". Some fans thought that the live performance was completely different from what was shown on TV. This brings up topics such as the relationship between performance and reality, the audience's imagination of the role, and so on. In addition, the film and television work that Wei Ma shot in the film is called "Double Bind" (hereinafter abbreviated as "DB"). This film name comes from the psychological concept of "double bondage", which refers to a dilemma of confusion. For example, when a mother says "I love you" to a child while turning her head to ignore him, the child will feel "double bondage". This is also an important cause of schizophrenia. At the same time, the title "DB" can also be regarded as a tribute to Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" (Double Indemnity), which also implies the "dual identity" of the characters in the cartoon (ie "Double Indemnity" Literal translation of the title). During the filming of "DB", the lines and story lines spoken by Wei Ma and other characters formed an intertextual relationship with the reality of the film itself: When filming DB, Wei Ma's first line "Who are you?" It implies that she is confused, and she is increasingly unclear who she is and what she is doing; Mima in "DB" plays a multi-personality girl Takahashi Yoko and kills her sister Takahashi Satomi, who replaced her sister and became a model, her personality disappeared-and in the cartoon, Wei Ma began to say the lines, not the name in the DB drama, but his real name "Fogyue Wei Ma", explaining his identity Not the model in the play, but his identity in reality: an actor. This blurry interweaving of reality and virtuality makes the film extremely horrifying and attractive, and it also increases the amount of information in the film. In Jin Min's work, the content in the film is often only the tip of the iceberg. It is the fascinating content that hides the background, clues, and the true face of the character.
In Jin Min’s interview, he mentioned that he really likes opposing concepts, such as black and white, fantasy and reality, true and false, and so on. "The House of Wei Ma" uses a lot of mirroring techniques to show this opposition and unity. There are a lot of mirror images in the film, such as the self in the mirror, the character staring out the window, the reflection reflected in the car window, the self-talking in front of the fish tank, and so on. These mirror images often mean the existence of reality and illusion at the same time: it is the true projection of Wei Ma’s inner moments, her lonely self; at the same time, the other self who can get rid of the shackles in the fantasy: the more authentic "self" Opportunities that can be released-what's more interesting is that Wei Ma's self is also a personality role played by Liu in the United States. The original self, which should have been more real, was thus replaced by the evil and madness of the United States in the mirror image, which caused the "self" to suffer endlessly, and the "self" was tampered with and contaminated. The turning point at the end of the film is a bit too fast: Liumei wants to kill Wei Ma frantically. After failing, he is about to throw into the car that drives him to find his death, but is rescued by Wei Ma. At the end of the film, Wei Ma reflected in the mirror of the car said to the audience: "I am real." Jin Min used another mirror lens to remind us that this is not a simple happy ending. Wei Ma did not get redemption because she abandoned her past self and became a real star. This is also the multiple meaning of the English title of the film: "Perfect Blue" can be understood as "perfect blue"-at the end of the film, the only clear and perfect blue sky appears in the film; at the same time, it can also be Translated into "very melancholic", it means that we may never be able to tell whether we are in reality or in fantasy!
"The House of Wei Ma" is about the mirror in the mirror, the dream in the dream, the peep in the peeping, the fantasy in the fantasy. This is the great legacy left by Director Jin Min. However, can we really wake up from our dreams? Can you see the truth in the mirror? There is a line in the film "It is impossible for a fantasy to become a reality." Is this Kam Min's true thoughts?
PS. Darren Aronov likes this film very much. He used the same scenes of the non-anaesthetic bath in his film "Requiem of Dreams". But Jin Min once said on the show that he had not received the copyright fee paid by Darren. Darren’s later "Black Swan" also has many similarities with this film: Wei Ma’s English name is Mima, and the black swan protagonist’s name is Nina; both films involve multiple personalities, blurring of fantasy and reality, Performance stage and reality and so on.
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