Japanese anime film-maker Satoshi Kon – director of “Perfect Blue” and “Tokyo Godfathers” – is famous for his philosophical digressions and masterful visuals. His movies offer a chaotic and less forgiving world than the universe of anime master Miyazaki. However, you could find unbridled beauty within those images. All his films are a form of dreams. “Paprika” (2006), the meta-thriller is his most dreamy trip, where the lines between dreams and reality blur. The film mixes several genres, borrowing ideas from the stories of Philip K. Dick and from movies like “Blade Runner”, “Until the End of the World” and other head-cracking anime.
“Paprika’s” storyline is something you might have read or
seen numerous times. It imagines the damage caused by an uncontrollable
machine. But the journey into this labyrinthine of visuals is very challenging
and at times disturbing. The film also
differs from Hollywood sci-fi thrillers because the lines between good and bad
guys are unfathomable. The McGuffin in “Paprika” is the ‘DC Mini’ – a
head-phone like device that allows recording a person’s dream. The story is set
in the near future, where a psychiatric institute uses DC Mini as a therapeutic
aid. The use of the device is not fully approved, but a female shrink Dr.
Atsuko Chiba is using it on her patients to help them. She enters her patient’s
subconscious mind through her sexy alter ego “Paprika”.
Detective Konakawa, who experiences serious nightmares, gets
help from Dr. Chiba through this dream therapy. Soon, the DC Mini’s are stolen
from the office by people who are against this technology. They want to
maintain the purity of dreams and so they use it with a malicious intent on the
creators of this device. The mysterious villain traps his victims inside the
torturous dreams as the victims fail to realize the difference between reality
and dream. Konakawa helps out to find the missing gizmos as Paprika wanders
through the dreams of adversaries to free the victims.
Nolan’s thought provoking blockbuster movie “Inception” is inspired from anime
like “Paprika”. At certain points, characters escape from dreams only to
realize later that they are still trapped in other’s dream. A collective dream
is shown in the film which threatens to totally obliterate the reality. In this
collective dream flute-playing frogs, evil doll, home appliances and various
machine parade through the streets of Tokyo. This collective dream might
represent the collective subconscious of people, where everyone is a consumer
or it can be seen as a critique of consumer culture. Though the storyline isn’t
hard to follow, the visuals in the third act go bonkers as the disjointedness
of dreams enters the adequacy of reality.
Earlier in the film, Dr. Chiba says that REM cycles –
recurring sleep state – first produces images like artsy short films and the
later cycles produces epic blockbusters that moves faster. Satoshi Kon infuses
both these types of imagery by echoing our mind’s eerie thought process.
Throughout the film, Kon draws heavy parallels between our dreamy state and
movie-watching state. He is also concerned about the way technology promises to
bring closer, only to isolate from their closer ones.
“Paprika” (90 minutes) pushes the virtues of anime and
tackles a variety of subjects. This adult-oriented animation may put-off those
who are reluctant to join the head trip, but its surrealistic imagining are
absolutely wondrous.
Trailer
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