What does she mean when assesses she's the real Mima? Is it solely a response to the nurses questioning her authenticity? And why is she smiling? I know it's open to interpretation but I have no interpretation.
The time is now, rise up from destitution
We won't lay down, resist the persecution
I understand why you were confused.
I think "Mima's smile" was a bit of a play towards the nurses gossiping. But I also think it was solidifying a key point in the story; Mima's pursuit to discover her identity, but also, her pursuit in believing her identity.
I didn't like the ending personally. Maybe I, too, was only confusing the story. I thought Perfect Blue kind of just drifted over the third act without a solid conclusion. What was the idea behind the security guard? He was the centre-point villain for pretty much the whole movie and then suddenly he's dead, and it moves onto 'Rumi'? I know it's probably supposed to be apart of the suspense by becoming a plot twist, but come on...
It's like finding an answer without explaining how you found it.
Maybe someone can clear this up for me.
i haven't seen this movie in a very long time (i own it on dvd but i can't con anybody to watch it with me!) so i might be wrong on this, but WHAT SECURITY GUARD? are you talking about the crazy guy with the munted face who was stalking her because he was in love with her? he was working WITH rumi/"the real mima". other than the rumi-mima thing, where the hell was the plot twist? this movie was very straightforward, i thought.
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"You're all talk, Hamill! You never even finished Jedi school!"
The smile and the line are a perfect example of breaking the "fouth wall." At this point, the audience is still having some nagging doubts about Mima's sanity and whether this is still part of her fantasy. The scene is resolved by her taking off her sunglasses, looking at the audience (through a mirror -- there is a lot of reflection imagery in the film) and reassuring us that she is there and that she is ok. I am not a big fan of this conceit -- addressing the audience -- but in this instance it works well.
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What was his screen name... "Me-Mania"? Anyway, the twist of the plot was that Mima had two stalkers operating independently of each other.
Literally it was a "Double Blind."
Me-mania was the kind of nightmare fan who sees himself as the one true fan/lover, the kind who can transcend adoration into hatred. Me-mania used his security guard uniform to get into everyplace Mima went, his camcorder recording every moment. And then he'd go home and add to the Mima's Room website he apparently created.
Rumi was a different kind of stalker. She was living vicariously through Mima. Instead of a heavyset middle aged woman living alone and ignored, she was a young woman, pretty and adored by thousands. Rumi even rented and outfited a similar studio apartment. As long as Mima cooperated by acting out Rumi's dream, everything was fine. But when Mima veered far from Rumi's dream, Rumi snapped.
My interpretation of the climactic events at the TV studio is that Me-Mania had convinced himself on his own to do away with Mima. The "Mima" talking to him, encouiraging him at his computer, was his own mental creation.
Meanwhile Rumi was working her way through her murder list. Just as Mima's "Double Blind" character snapped after the rape and became a serial killer throuh a schizoid split, so too did Rumi snap as a resuklt of witnessing this rape. That the rape was imaginary play acting was irrelevant. It was real enoughto Rumi's inner play acting. So Rumi started killing everyone who threatened her alter ego. We don't see how or when Rumi killed her boss but it was plain he sealed his death warrant when he told her Mima's next film would also contain sex scenes. Rumi lured him back to the studio and butchered him. She then found Me-Mania, realized what had happened, and either hid his body or finished him off and then hid the body. Me-Mania's eyes were still intact which maked me suspect he died of the hammer blow Mima delivered.
With the last of the male threats to real-Mima and Rumi-Mima dealt with, the stage was set for the final confrontation between the two Mimas.
firstly: spoiler warning
In stories revolving around Dissociative Identity Disorder, you really can't take much of the story as literal fact. It's as likely that none of the events were real-world facts, but the hallucinations of a singularity. This individual took on the persona of both Rumi and Mima(perhaps as well as every character), and when one of these became stronger than the other, and branched out from the rest - the other became jealous and decided to put a stop to it. It's possible that either Rumi or Mima are the actual person, it's also possible that neither are the actual person, just both manifestations of DID.
If you ignore this possibility, however, the events are as follows
So, Mima is a Pop-Idol who is offered a small role on a show and decides to take it, wanting to further her career. Rumi is her slightly overbearing agent, almost acting as her mother, who insists Mima only wants to sing and that she should not make the change from singing to acting. Rumi, an ex-Idol herself, is protective of Mima to the point where she lives vicariously through her and everything that happens to Mima is also felt by Rumi. Rumi is unstable, and concocts an illusion of herself as Mima to cope with her own feeling of worthlessness and rekindle her past. When the real Mima breaks away from what Rumi thinks she should be, Rumi is outraged. She begins to consort with a vapid yet faithful fan of Mima's, controlling him through emails to do a number of things to save Mima's "innocent" image. Several of the early incidents are perpetrated by Me-Mania such as the phone call, fax, hit and run and subsequent elevator news clipping, as well as the murder of the screenwriter and attempted rape/murder of Mima. Ultimately Me-Mania is just a pawn of Rumi-Mima and while he remains a haunting figure to Mima and stalks her relentlessly.. it is Rumi who commits the subsequent murders and has Mima framed to remove her from the picture. Eventually Rumi-Mima is left with no other option than to kill the real Mima, so she can become fully realized, she thinks. The chase ensues and Rumi is revealed to be the Ghost Mima(though I highly doubt that this is true throughout, Rumi was this character, but Mima wasn't seeing Rumi every time she hallucinated and saw the spritely ghost) and Mima returns to her sanity when she discovers that it was not herself after all, but Rumi.
And all that barely manages to explain anything. This movie is incredibly though provoking, you could right volumes about the psychology of it and what -if any- events were factual. I still stand by the statement that this movie is a study in DID and none of it should be taken literally. Every facet is a carefully executed separate personality, and they all come crashing down together. The strongest of them survives, the main character - Mima.
"So say we all."
I assumed Rumi was the Mima that Me-Mania thought he was "e-mailing every day," and who was asking him for help (though he imagined it was the ghost behind him rather than an e-mail or IM or whatevs.) So that when Rumi appeared at the end it actually explained things for me, rather than made things more confusing.
shareThat's what I thought as well. I was also thinking it might be possible that some scenes we think are mima were actually rumi, especially when she's at the computer.
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