“Thank you sincerely for all these beautiful memories. I loved the world I lived in. Just thinking about it makes me happy.”
Renowned anime film director Satoshi Kon wrote those words in his final letter before he passed away due to cancer in 2010. The director is most known for his transformative, surrealist films, like “Perfect Blue,” “Millennium Actress,” “Tokyo Godfathers” and “Paprika,” as well as his show, “Paranoia Agent.”
“Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist,” or “Satoshi Kon: l’Illusionniste,” is a documentary by French director Pascal-Alex Vincent celebrating Kon’s life. It premiered in 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival, but recently became available for free for a limited time through the National Museum of Asian Art. The film brings together those who worked closely with Kon himself — including producers, artists, voice actors and filmmakers from Japan, the United States and France — to speak about the inspiration they all found in his creations.
Throughout the film, Vincent utilizes images of crowded city landscapes set to a synth beat reminiscent of the music of Kon’s frequent collaborator Susumu Hirasawa. Sometimes, unexpected images may appear, such as an elderly man posing for pictures in a schoolgirl’s uniform, or a yellow-painted man dressed as Pikachu squatting on the street. Though there is little explanation, context or, at times, even correlation between these visuals and what is being discussed, it sets the mood. By juxtaposing the grounded urban setting with this dreamy surrealist atmosphere, it returns viewers to the worlds Kon crafted in his career.
The documentary does not spend much time discussing Kon’s life, nor does it provide much information about what drove him to make such films. Instead, it chooses to examine the processes and ideas Kon wished to explore within each of his films alongside pieces of his worldview and personality he imparted to people he worked and interacted with. Thus, while it is impossible to truly describe every facet of Satoshi Kon, the documentary is able to share fragments of his life for people to understand his peculiarities.
Vincent introduces Kon through the eyes of his colleagues and contemporaries. Producer Masao Maruyama describes Kon as a man with “two sides to him”: one that he would call “nasty,” and another he would call “endearing”; ultimately, Maruyama says, that is why he loved him. Others, such as director Mamoru Oshii (“Ghost in the Shell”), called him “prickly” due to his clear but often brutal honesty, while voice actress Megumi Hayashibara (“Paprika”) felt a sense of “gentleness” from him as well as a sense of mystery.
The documentary also portrays this duality as a core aspect of his filmography. Many of his films either have a grim, surrealist edge or a sense of optimistic humor. Vincent discusses each of his works individually by diving deep into their distinct themes, creation processes and connections to his other films — and through it all, the unique melding of fiction and reality that ties them together.
In some cases, Kon’s two sides are more visible as a component within his plotlines. In “Perfect Blue,” an idol-turned-actress is haunted not only by a stalker but by a ghostly image of herself, and in “Paprika,” a scientist quite literally invades people’s dreams to investigate a “dream terrorist.” In other works, his duality is utilized in more realistic settings. For example, “Millennium Actress” visualizes the life of an actress through two documentary makers literally stepping into the actress’s films, while the dreaminess in “Tokyo Godfathers” simply relies on the exaggerated animation of characters to tell the absurd and endearing tale of three homeless people caring for a baby.
This is complemented by the personal nature of his characters. As animator Aya Suzuki recalls in the documentary, she initially questioned the brutal treatment of Mima, the protagonist of “Perfect Blue,” but upon speaking to the director himself, Kon stated that it was because “Mima [is] Satoshi Kon.” Through his characters in works like “Perfect Blue” and “Millennium Actress,” Kon expressed the personal torment and pressures he felt throughout his time in the anime industry. Though the characters are vastly different from Kon himself on the surface, he found sympathy with them, reflecting on his own struggles in his work.
Kon had a way of combining these defining creative methods that deviated from standard storytelling with a sense of humanity. Vincent’s work emphasizes how this is likely what made Kon an inspiration across the globe. Though his films were not financial successes, they were critically acclaimed, and his legacy lives on in the works of others. As shown in the documentary, anime director Mamoru Hosoda (“The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,” “Belle”) stated that Kon “broadened the scope of animation” and proved that animated works could be just as impactful as live-action films. Abroad, directors like Darren Aronofsky drew direct inspiration from Kon, as his films “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan” are comparable to “Perfect Blue” in their cinematography and story.
The documentary also shows how French director Marc Caro even sought to adapt Kon’s manga “Tropic of the Sea,” inspired by the portrayal of the “conflict between tradition and a kind of raging modernity.” Even in recent years, Rodney Rothman pointed to “Paprika’s” visual representation of how it feels to “have your reality bended” as something he drew upon when making “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
With his mind-bending days behind him, however, Kon was aiming for something family-oriented for the feature film following “Paprika.” His next work would have been “Dreaming Machine,” which, according to Aya Suzuki, would have also acted as a training ground for young artists and animators hoping to be the future of the industry. Before it could have been realized though, Kon passed away.
The documentary does well in capturing the enigmatic side to Kon. It gives little information on the director himself, aiming instead to serve as a platform to talk about what it was like working with him as well as his present impact. It would have been interesting to truly spend more time knowing who Kon was and how his life is reflected in his works. However, perhaps it is fitting that the audience is given mere impressions of the artist in all his bluntness and all his brightness.
“Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist” is a documentary that chooses to deeply examine the ripples Kon’s life created over the artist himself. A perfectionist, but a passionate one at that, Kon hoped to advance the anime industry with his incomparable works. Though his hopes did not come into fruition like he imagined, the stories he left behind continue to allow creators and viewers alike to step into a slice of his life and the dreams that came with it.
The film is available for free through the National Museum of Asian Art between March 26 and April 10.