The end of "Millennium Actress" reminded me of the game "To the moon". In the game, John and River agreed to meet at the same place the next year. River asked John what to do if you forgot, John answered her, then we always They will meet on the moon, and at the end of the game, the male and female protagonists, who have spent their lives together, finally clasped their fingers on the rocket flying to the moon in the fantasy created by the scientific machine, fulfilling John's greatest wish in his life. Unfortunately, at the same time, in reality, John's life also came to an end in great satisfaction, which is strikingly similar to the ending of "Millennium Actress": Chiyoko, who had recovered his youthful face, boarded a rocket and flew to space, and set foot on the chase again. The phantom's journey, while the rocket flies into the vast universe, also implies that Chiyoko lying on the hospital bed is heading for the end of her life.
[Anyway, what I really love is the journey of chasing him. 】
Girls' Generation's Chiyoko stumbled across a fugitive painter who left behind a key, and when he left, he promised to meet again in the north one day, where he would finish his paintings. At this point, Chiyoko began her lifelong pursuit. In order to be able to go north, she decided to become an actress, and because of the guidance of the old fortune teller, she boarded the train bound for Manchuria. After that, she kept chasing the phantom in her memory. In every movie she starred in, she was the image of running desperately for the person she loved, from the bloody Warring States period to the end of the country when the country was destroyed. , and then before the war in the period of white terror, the background of the movie played by Chiyoko was constantly changing with the background of the times. However, in Chiyoko's eyes, all of this receded into a blurred background, and the smoke was everywhere. Whether it was a ninja who wanted to take her life, or a roaring and furious Godzilla, everything was trampled under her feet. All she did was to keep moving forward and forward, getting closer and closer.
Of course, in the end we know that Chiyoko has never been able to see that painter again in her whole life. She has grown old and cried and said, I don't know since when, I can't even remember what he looked like. At the same time, she also gradually realized that what she looks like now is no longer the little girl in the painter's memory.
In fact, the end point she was chasing did not exist a long, long time ago.
All stories are love stories, but "Millennium Actress" is not, because the star of this story has always been only Chiyoko. In other words, "Millennium Actress" is the purest love story, just like "Letter from a Strange Woman", the craziest, most blind, and most firm love is too rare, so it is only worthy of one person to enjoy alone, yes There is no way to share it with each other. So what Chiyoko is chasing is not so much a specific person as it is love itself.
Chasing made Chiyoko step by step into a Japanese Madonna. Her competitor Yuiko also said that the pursuit of that man allowed Chiyoko to stay young forever. This pursuit not only broke the barriers of reality and fiction, but also disrupted the flow of time. Weights and measures blur the flow of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It can be said that it is precisely because of this pursuit that Chiyoko's legendary life has been fulfilled.
【I hate you to the bone, and love you like marrow】
Chiyoko often sees an old woman in hallucinations. In a play, the old woman deceives Chiyoko, who wants to die after her lover, to drink a potion that can immortalize her, cursing her to endure the torment of love forever. "I hate you deeply, and love you like marrow." Finally, we found that this old woman was Chiyoko himself. These two sentences show that Chiyoko had two contradictory feelings on the way of chasing. On the one hand, She has decided to follow her lover to the ends of the earth. On the other hand, the long-term pursuit has not tormented her mind, passing by again and again, being deceived and obstructed again and again, every time such a thing happens, Chiyoko feels in her heart. The image of the old woman will age a bit, and eventually become a disgusting old woman, and the spinning wheel in the old woman's hand is the wheel of fortune that never stops, and we seem to fall into the same bad situation again and again. We call it It is fate, but in fact, the wheel of fate is turned by our own hands.
Although Chiyoko seems to be running all the time, in fact, the goal she is chasing has undergone several changes. At the beginning, she was indeed chasing the painter, a real person, but as time passed, the painter's back began to blur, and chasing has become a habit and obsession of Chiyoko. When the painter's back gradually disappeared on the completed paintings, Chiyoko probably knew that they would never meet again, but as soon as the camera turned, she boarded the rocket again and started another journey of pursuit. Chiyoko in her youth, Chiyoko in old age, and an old woman who reflects Chiyoko's spiritual world. The images of the three finally overlapped at the end of the film. From that moment, Chiyoko finally found the object she was chasing again, which was the former one. At this point, Chiyoko's footprint finally closed into a ring.
People have eight sufferings, birth, old age, sickness and death, separation of love, reunion of resentment and hatred, and nothing to ask for. We have been taught by Confucianism since we were young that life is not always what we want, and it is normal to ask for nothing. Therefore, we should always think about one or two. Now the popular Buddha-nature lifestyle is always repeating. It doesn’t matter. However, in "The Rhinoceros in Love", Mingming said: "Forgetting is the only thing most people can do, but I decided not to forget." Lin Xi also used "The Moon at That Time" to ask how brave it is to be able to remember . Yes, we choose to forget because we are afraid of pain and cowardly, and in many literary and artistic works, it is precisely because of this "don't forget" that there are so many moving stories.
【Tomorrow is the full moon, but I prefer the current moon. 】
"Millennium Actress" can be seen everywhere in the Japanese spirit of grief, whether it is the disappearing figure on the snowy field, or the rocket ship slowly flying into the silent space, or the round in the sky that looks like a full moon, but it always stays there. The flawed fourteenth moon, the sad power that runs through the entire film is not a punch that knocks the viewer to the ground, but more like constant pressure on a mirror, which gradually cracks and eventually shatters.
When it comes to Jin Min, I think of dreaming, so it is inevitable to talk about his predecessor, Hayao Miyazaki, who is also a dream machine. However, Jin Min's dream is different from that of Hayao Miyazaki. If Hayao Miyazaki has been trying to use his works to convey to the audience that as long as there is hope in the heart, the dream will eventually come true, then Min Min's dream, then It is the dream in the "Diamond Sutra" in "All conditioned methods are like dream bubbles".
In fact, there is another person who has been chasing after his whole life hidden in the film, that is the documentary director Tachibana Genya. Since his youth, he has followed Chiyoko's footsteps step by step, guarding the key she lost. , turning her into his dream. However, everything was in vain, Chiyoko couldn't even remember the life he had saved her, and the key that claimed to be able to unlock very, very important things actually locked Chiyoko's heart tightly.
In Jin Min's worldview, the things we pursue all our lives will eventually gradually disappear into the wasteland of memory, and we think that we hold the key to unlocking the truth and keep running are just prisoners of dreams. Chiyoko's whole life has been acting, how does she know whether she is a fake or a real lover? We only know that each of us has been pushed to the stage from birth, and Chiyoko's performance can finally end at the moment of her death.
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