Drama by Madhouse
Directed by Satoshi Kon
Length: 87 minutes
Released: 2002
Rating: S
Plot: Film production company Ginei has decided to demolish their outdated studios, and to celebrate the occasion, documentarian Genya Tachibana does an interview with Chiyoko Fujiwara, once the brightest star of the company but retired and living in seclusion for the last 30 years. A big fan of hers, he brings her a key, which becomes the starting point of the retelling of her memories.
Thoughts: And finally, it's time to close this joint's dive into Satoshi Kon's work, regrettably as It's one that should have taken a lot longer, but happy to have completed it. It's the one I'm rewatching remembering less of the plot, so it's probably much closer to a first watch than any of the others, although I did remember bits of it here and there.
Chiyoko's story is one of a shy girl from a moderately well-off family during the era of increased military adventurism across East Asia of the early Hirohito reign. After her mother turned down an invitation for her to become an actress, she comes across a man on the run holding a painting, send his chasers the other way and shelters him. The main visual device is putting Genya and his cameraman Kyoji in the middle of her retelling of her story, making them like crew on a film, and during these moments it's never clear how much is Chiyoko's retelling parts of her life or her roles, as they move quickly from one movie to another, or if there's even any meaningful difference: how much did Chiyoko put of herself in her roles? Was her rise to stardom influenced by her ability to channel the sense of loss and holding on to hope she shared with a country recovering from political struggles and then obliteration, where I'm sure it could be years to discover if someone you knew was alive or dead, if ever? Up to a point, it's really not important to know if she really did chase him on a train platform or it was just a scene from a movie, the feeling was there all the same, and the only reason she accepted to do movies was so that she could blindly follow him to Manchuria, and becoming a star was maybe just in service of making herself as visible as possible so he could see her face and find her. Genya isn't a reliable indicator either, as he's both well versed enough to remember the lines as Chiyoko re-enacts moments of her acting career, but is also aware of her personal life, and as we learn even later, was even closer to her than he let on, having working as a directors' assistant in productions where she took part. Still, like Perfect Blue, all this blending of what may be fiction and reality is never confusing, which is something that many directors who try these sorts of stories often look track of, and as I've mentioned, end up doing the “it hurts itself in it’s confusion” thing where the viewer is left more confused than the characters. Of course she was never a princess in feudal Japan, but I feel the temptation for many would be to repeat the train platform sequence over and over again, because "yesssss let's show how deep this is by making it extra confusing". The movie doesn't try to be either, ultimately it's a story of finding purpose in life.
As the years went by, she still held to the key he gave her as a reminder on the promise she made to guess what was the key is for, to the point Junichi, one of the directors in the studio and who wanted to marry Chiyoko, conspires with Eiko to make the key disappear, knowing the reason Chiyoko abandoned her first production to chase the painter into Northern Manchuria after being tipped by a fortune-teller was nothing more than a plan to get rid of her, knowing the potential she had to overtake her as the brightest star in the studio. She later discovers the key hidden away by him, at the point she gets one final tip, a letter from the painter from the hands of the policeman who chased the painter, now a decrepit old man atoning for his wrongs. She gives chase to Hokkaido once again, but it was fruitless, as the man confides to young Genya he tortured him to death. Chiyoko returns to acting and during an earthquake she is saved by Genya, but on the reflection of the helmet she sees the old lady who has been haunting her, maybe no more than her subconscious realising she's not the same teen girl who helped a dissident escape from the police and who he painted on the walls of her now destroyed home, she loses the key one final time, kept by Genya, and retires. Back to the modern world, the earthquakes take a toll on her fragile health and she collapses, still having time to tell Genya on her death bed her final realisation: even if she was not reunited with the painter, she loved to chase him.
Visually, it's graded on a midpoint between the ramped up OVA of Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers; the character design is an unmistakably a Satoshi Kon work, and while they might lack some technical detail, they are extremely expressive and given the nature of his works, it's not a bad trade-off. I do wish I was more knowledgeable of Japanese cinema, because sure, I think everyone picks up the reference to Toshiro Mifune sequence in Throne of Blood as Kyoji is bombarded by arrows and the Godzilla-type film, but I'm sure there's a few more clues here and there (I just know I've see that shot where Chiyoko's character is pointing a short sword at her own throat, although it might just be one of those visual clichés with hundreds of years of history). In terms of music, this was the first step of his partnership with Susumu Hirasawa, being a fan of him and at this point with a couple of credits under his belt, with the Detonator Orgun OVA I've looked at last week and Berserk. As mentioned before, it's a match made in heaven, and he's the perfect person to put to music the otherworldly visuals and oneiric plots Kon committed himself to.
At the end of this trip, there's a part of me who thinks all the big guys who want to make shows and movies for recap obsessed people that are MINDFUCKS full of PLOT TWISTS purely to make bland stories look more interesting by turning them into conversation fodder should all be rounded up and thrown into an active volcano in an attempt to bring Satoshi Kon and David Lynch back from the dead.
Another extremely touching story by Satoshi Kon
Visually it could be better here and there on a technical level