Paprika is an anime film, original title
Papurika - or more accurately, as
liveforever tells me,
パ プ リ カ - in its home market of
Japan, where it was released in
2006. It was made by
Satoshi Kon from a story originally drawn from a 1993 novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui. Released by
Madhouse Pictures, the film draws on well-known vocal talent, including voice actors from the
Cowboy Bebop series and the iconic
Ghost in the Shell films.
It doesn't really resemble them, however.
Paprika is a story about...is a story concerning...no, that won't work.
In this movie, a team of psychiatrists and engineers has invented a device called the DC Mini. This much we learn almost immediately. The function of the device is to allow one person to intrude into another's dreams, observe, and record the events therein on computers for later study and analysis. Did you ever see the Dennis Quaid vehicle Dreamscape? Well, sort of like that.
But not really.
See, someone's stolen some of these things. The DC Minis, I mean. And there's this underground dream therapist named Paprika who is helping people using a DC Mini - but she doesn't really exist. Maybe. And then the stolen DC Minis start to invade people's waking psyches, causing damage-
...and then it gets really confusing.
But the beauty of it is that it only gets confusing for the characters. All the chaos and insanity (literal insanity, we're dealing with psychiatric patients here) that the makers of this film stretch and employ every last trick of anime to depict, as well as invent a few, is something that we the viewer never quite lose track of. The characters spend a great deal of time trying to figure out just what the hell is going on at any particular moment, and while we the viewers may spend a lot of time in the early part of the movie doing the same thing, once we are given enough information, we never feel like we've been left behind the characters. We're with them. The levels of confusion, as it were, bind us tightly together; we feel their dizziness and their struggles to comprehend, and it brings us into the action, behind the fourth wall.
There are some points in the movie where that fourth wall is metasyntactically shattered. Does that sound like a jumble of terminology? Don't worry, you'll know precisely what I'm talking about as soon as it happens. The whole film is like this. I was forcibly reminded (in a good way) of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler at some points.
And did I mention it's unbelievably gorgeous? While the animation is not as smooth as Ghost in the Shell or some of the more recent Hayao Miyazaki creations, the imagery is luscious. Coupled with music that runs the gamut from scene-relevant and absorbing to absolutely soaring1, the movie begs - cries out - to be seen on the biggest screen it can, with the best sound system possible. In a rare case, the preview actually does offer an encapsulation of the film; I recommend watching it (it's available online, at Apple's Quicktime movie trailers site amongst other places). The opening credits of the film are a brilliant, lyrical and - damn it - perky sequence which offer you a flavor of the title character and the part of the film's emotional presence she will be holding up.
There are some disturbing bits in it, which is only natural as it is a film which plumbs the deepest depths (literally) of its characters' psyches and drags them kicking and screaming into the outer world. Inner demons meet traditional Japanese apocalyptic scenes, here, and unlike movies which try for the complete mind game but don't pull it off (*cough*Total Recall*cough*The Usual Suspects*cough*) this one manages it not just once, but multiple times. And unlike Akira, it isn't a mind-numbingly exhausting cycle of endless destruction, but 90 minutes of thoughtful metaphor and explosive beauty.
Worth seeing.
Paprika
(orig. Papurika)
Rel. 2006 (Japan, Madhouse) / 2007 (USA, Sony Pictures Classics)
Director: Satoshi Kon
Voice Cast (as per U.S./Sony release subtitle character names):
1 The film's music composer has made a couple of tracks from the film freely available via the internet; one of them is outtakes from the song most recognizable from the preview, titled 'Runner' or 'HashiruMono'. The other is the closing credits song, named 'The Girl in Byakkoya - White Tiger Field'. They can be found at: http://www.teslakite.com/freemp3s/e/paprika/ If you'd like the three tracks on the soundtrack that sound the most like the preview, I recommend purchasing 'Mediational Field,' 'A Drop Full of Memories' and 'Chaser' from your favorite download service. The song from the movie's opening credit sequence is 'Mediational Field.'
Extra Credit! If anyone does purchase 'Mediational Field' please do me a favor - listen to it carefully, and tell me if it reminds you, too, at certain points, of the melody of Nik Kershaw's track 'Wouldn't it Be Good.' Heh. Thanks.