Amateur Recommendation Hour: Paprika

Today’s recommendation is an anime film that I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of you have maybe heard of but never seen for yourselves. For years it was not only the directors most well known work, but the only one available to a western audience until the licensing of one of his films seemingly opened the floodgates on international releases for, as of writing this piece, all of his filmography. It is artists like him that give me the most fulfillment not only in a satisfying artistic experience, but also gentle suggesting introspection on my deepest and most soulful of levels. Asking me to look deeper and examine the preconceived notions of self and my relationship with wider society.

Paprika is the final feature film directed by surrealist master Satoshi Kon before his untimely passing 4 years later in 2010. Genius begets genius. And in the case of Paprika it is the among the very best realizations of the cerebral genius, both thematically and emotionally, that the most philosophical art is capable of. It is equally mesmerizing and hypnotic. With the high quality animation and mix of stylized and realistic that sets Kon’s vision apart from any of his peers.

In the near future, Doctor Atsuko Chiba and her colleagues are working on a device called the DC Mini, which is intended to help psychiatric patients by allowing the user to see into people’s dreams, but naturally as with many things intended to assist, in the wrong hands it has the potential to destroy people's minds. When a prototype is stolen, it goes without saying Doctor Chiba must recover it before it is used for malicious and damaging reasons by “dream terrorists.”

It is in how it realizes it’s idiosyncratic and esoteric vision that sets Paprika apart from works that are thematically and tonally mutually intelligible with it. Its color palette striking a delicate balance between overly saturated and coldly distant. Its shot framing can be wild but decidedly in control of itself even as its world constantly crumbles around it, reality seemingly dangling by the daintiest of threads. Visually arresting but never cluttered or chaotic to the point of actually being unable to see. You can see the intention and meticulous ways that Kon loved to frame shots, write narratives, dialogue and characters in such experimental and unapologetically auteurist manners, realizing visions that  always felt distinctly his brought to life by the teams of incredible animators at his side.

Proceedings are presenting in an often dazzling and uniquely dreamy haze, full of symbolic gestures and imagery involving cameos of Shintoism and even Oedipus, where important information is not immediately apparent to the viewer, which when done well can disorient the viewer in a way that enhances the tone and style of the film. As Kon himself stated: "Movies you can watch once and understand entirely is the type of movie that I really don't like. However if you are able to understand 70 to 80 percent of what is being relayed, there is still some percentage left for that would allow for your own interpretation…that's the type of movie I do like. There might be a part that you don't quite understand but there is a portion that rests in your heart.”

The characterization of Doctor Atsuko Chiba in particular is a highlight of the film. Juxtaposed against her solemn, cold, and maybe even a little self-loathing real world self. When diving into the dream space you can see a playful, uninhibited, hopeful side to her as she takes on her titular alter ego Paprika. Symbolic of the disconnect we see between online avatars and the real world person behind them. We’re less afraid, we feel safer in a space that gives us the comfortable distance between ourselves and a real tangible society that seeks to tear us down with it, bring them down to our level. The corporeal rules that govern life allowing us to feel less shackled in the spaces we want to inhabit but feel too afraid to do so with all of our insecurities and darker pieces we are fearful of our own and others judgment of us. 

The antagonists of the film being a direct challenge to the way that Atusko freely and easily navigates these spaces that she is too afraid to in the real world. And it is in their belief of being arbiters of reality so to speak that their motivations become more understandable and multi dimensional. The complexity of morality and how it is adjudicated, as well as who are the ones to adjudicate it is a fascinating and relevant lens through which to view the varied methods of expression we now have at our disposal. Satoshi Kon is and was always forward thinking and ahead of his time in how he perceived these epistemic crises that are even more prevalent as time goes on.

A special mention must go out to frequent Kon collaborator and one of my personal favorite composers Susumu Hirasawa for lending his brilliantly haunting electronic and synthetic sounds for the musical score of Paprika. It is the distant ambience and choral dream-like aura he provides that reinforces so many of the themes and tones for each scene it is featured in. It is in his ability to create atmosphere that is shown no better than in this score.

There’s a lot of unpack, as is the case with many of Kon’s works, heavily layered pieces as emotionally intelligent of a man as he was. But if I were to read into what the film is truly about, my interpretation would be that it is about the relationship between our dreams, our identities, how technology has such a massive influence on both of them, and how we struggle to strike the delicate balance between who we’ve become, and who we truly wish to be. 

Being able to focus ourselves away from outside influences that seek our conformity in their messaging is a formative piece of creating the image of oneself that we want to ultimately emulate. Allowing ourselves to be as uniquely a human being as we can be is not only fulfilling in its own right, it also affords us a certain degree of safety from those afraid of their own introspection.