Paprika
Way back in high school, I ordered a DVD called Perfect Blue from a flier somewhere (I think I was a member of the “SciFi Bookclub” or something at the time). I’d never heard of it before, but it reviewed as a Hitchcock-esque anime with overtones of Philip K. Dick. I didn’t much care for Hitchcock back then and I was just getting into Philip K. Dick, so really what I was hoping for was anime boobies. Oh high school.
Fast forward ten years. Pefect Blue, Millennium Actress, and Tokyo Godfathers are three of my favorite animes (and I no longer even really care for the genre). The fact that Satoshi Kon makes movies–you can really tell he knows a lot about film-making–that just happen to be animated… well, I find that really cool. I never caught his TV show, but it might be something to throw on Netflix some day.
Last night I dragged a couple of friends along to go see Paprika, which, shockingly, I also really enjoyed. I just love the way he’s able to blend fantasy and reality (not, as the reviewers say, unlike Philip K. Dick). I’ve known since the first time I looked him up many years ago that the guy was a protege of Katsuhiro Otomo, but this is the first time I really felt that influence in one of his films. The ruined city-scapes and tentacled villain seemed reminescent of Akira, while the gigantic debris parade really reminded me of Roujin Z. If appropriation is at work, though, Kon has certainly taken the two visual themes and branded them his own. There is a certain lightness of heart at play in his films–something I’m not quite sure I can formulate into words. Akira is philosophical at the end, but there is an underlying cynicism that runs throughout the film–biker gangs, an oppressive government, freedom fighters, crazy religious sects, a “Neo-Tokyo.” Likewise, the mechanical mayhem in Roujin Z is all driven by the dying desire of a lonely old man.
It’s not like the subject matter of Paprika is light, either. At its core: bad guys stole some high-tech gadgets and are using them to make innocent people act batshit crazy. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that… but that’s the big picture. As you would expect, there are good guys who try to stop the bad guys. It’s these characters that Satoshi Kon clearly loves. All three of them–Atchan, Konakawa, and Tokita–are split in some way, though it may be a bit of a stretch to call Tokita a main character. Atchan is a cold psychiatrist by day and the vivacious, friendly, and loveable Paprika when she enters the dreams of her patients. Konakawa is a depressed and lonely cop who once dreamed of making movies. Tokita is a brilliant scientist, but he acts like a child and is enormously fat. Within the context of the movie, you could kind of see each of them as having a real-world persona and a dream-persona–who they would be in their dreams. One of the major themes of the film has to do with the dreamworld merging with reality, and by the end of the film each of these character takes that “dream” personality and absorbs it back into their “real” personality.
I’m starting to ramble, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it. I didn’t even mention how pretty the whole thing was.
