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Paprika!
By CheapReveal | June 14, 2007
Alright, first off, before you start reading this I urge you to please start playing the song above. It will give you a much better understanding of what I am about to write and an all around better experience.
Dreams, the subconscious, architecture, japan, art, experimental music, nature and technology, the future. These are things that I will be (and have been) obsessed with for the rest of my life. Paprika fulfilled about 7 of the 9. Architecture and nature made brief appearances but nothing worth sticking in my brain (besides a brief Tarzan scene). If you can get some kind of idea of what this movie is about based on that, then I would like to congratulate you and tell you that whatever you are thinking, this film is 100 times more.
Just so we’re all on the same page, I will give a brief summary of the movie. Basically, and I use that term with much liberty, all hell breaks loose when a mechanism called a “DC mini”, that allows a psychotherapist to enter a patients dreams, gets stolen. The perpetrators (who are only referred to as terrorists) begin to enter people’s subconscious not only when they are asleep, but also when they are about their daily business (you can see how this could get hairy). The victims become trapped in this half awake/half asleep state where they think they are marching in a parade of dolls and cultural icons but their waking body is sitll in the “real” world. All these people end up dead or in a comatose like state until *guess who* comes to save them.
One of the reasons Paprika is so complex and hard to analyze (aside from the fact that you’re trying to take in all the orgasmically stunning images while still reading the subtitles) is the feeling of being lost within the film. It was not until I stopped trying to catch every bit of what was going on that I was able to fully enjoy the movie. At one point the main character, Dr. Atsuko Chiba (a.k.a. Paprika in the dream world), reaches out to the audience by asking her colleague, weird scientist character, whether she is in the real world or not a.k.a. not dreaming any more. I felt that this was Satoshi Kon’s way of keeping the audience going by saying “yeah, I know you’re confused but don’t worry, even the main charaters have no idea what the fuck is going on”.
One thing I found especially disappointing when watching the movie was that a couple to my right left about 20 minutes from the end. My friends, whom I went with, also found this equally baffling. One thing that is especially unique about Paprika was that you could enjoy no matter how much effort you put into it. Even If you walk in an hour into the movie I still believe you would enjoy the film, you would have no idea as to what the hell is going on, but nonetheless you would still enjoy the stunning visuals and even be able to piece together some of the plot. Now, on the flip side of this, if you are a real animation enthusiast and want to look deeper, then you could write a whole thesis on the different meanings of the characters, concepts and symbols.
One thing that I particularly like about anime is that characters are often times purposefully made non realistic by exaggerating certain traits (much like a caricature). Satoshi Kon seems to employ this technique in both of the films I’ve seem by him. You seem to get a feel for the characters before you even know who they are, just by their features.
No matter what false pretenses of Japanese animation you have, I would urge you all to go see this movie. I’m sure you can tell from write up here that I’m all for it, but make your own decision and see if you agree with me. No matter what you think, whether you enjoy it or now, I can guarantee you will be blown away by the visuals.
See what the others thought about it:
Variety
Twitch
Kaiju Shakedown
Rolling Stone
(p.s. I’ll save you some time… they’re pretty much all unanimous.)
As you may now have noticed the soundtrack is equally as nuts as the movie. Download these songs and then go out and buy the soundtrack. The music is the work of Japanese composer Susumu Hirasawa who seems to be equally obsessed with electronified voices as he is with berserk synthesized beats.
Susumu Hirasawa - The girl in Byakkoya [MP3: ]
Susumu Hirasawa - Runner [MP3: ]
June 14th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
hi there fellow Japan(ese) freak! I just saw this splendid Japanese film “Paprika” and was wondering who could have scored such a brilliant soundtrack. I just HAVE to HAVE these songs so I thank you soooooooooooooo much for posting them. I tried looking everywhere but it was almost impossible (since I can’t read Japanese..).
June 14th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Are u all joking. This movie was shit and so are all his others, except Tokyo Godfathers. All his his films end up being sappy love stories with a subtle twist here and there… Paprika is no different.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:06 am
visually, this movie was stunning. but it was definitely lacking for me in the storyline. i just feel like they could’ve done so much more with such an original idea.