Paprika (2006) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Put a little spice into your life.

Paprika is a fascinating animated film that deals with the nature of dreams and dreaming. It pulls a lot from the history of cinema, even teaching a bit about the medium itself, while creating a bizarre world where anything, and everything, is possible.

First Impressions

The trailer for this animated film is about a near future where a device has been created that controls dreams. Unfortunately, a group of terrorists steal it and it’s up to one woman to stop them from destroying the world and human minds. Like an odd mix of a Terry Gilliam film and Inception, this anime features fantastic imagery and a number of strange creatures and visuals. Time for a serving of film with a dash of Paprika.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

Detective Toshimi Konakawa (Akio Ōtsuka) experiences a strange dream of being in a circus where he is chased by people all with his face. He runs through the hallway of a hotel chasing a suspect when the walls and floor become pliable and fall away from underneath him. He is guided through his dream by Paprika, the alter-ego of Dr. Atsuko Chiba (Megumi Hayashibara), a psychiatrist. She is using a device called the DC Mini to access Konakawa’s dreams. Atsuko works for the Institute for Psychiatric Research but freelances as Paprika in her free time.

Three of the DC Mini devices have been stolen which concerns the chairman of the Institute, Dr. Seijirō Inui (Tōru Emori)– a bald, wheelchair-bound man–due to the lack of restrictions on their use. The DC Mini can be used to access anyone’s dreams at any time, and no safeguards are in place to keep them from being used outside the Institute. Atsuko’s colleague, the elderly Dr. Toratarō Shima (Katsunosuke Hori), suddenly starts spouting nonsensical statements and jumps out a window. He survives and Atsuko accesses Dr. Shima’s dream world to understand what made him freak out. She discovers his dreams contain a crazy dream parade made up of dolls and anthropomorphic animals. She recognizes Kei Himuro (Daisuke Sakaguchi) in the dream, a friend of DC Mini creator Dr. Kōsaku Tokita (Tōru Furuya).

Investigating Himuro’s apartment in the real world, Atsuko finds a secret hallway in the closet which leads to an amusement park, which is really a waking dream. She is saved from leaping over the apartment balcony by Dr. Morio Osanai (Kōichi Yamadera), another colleague at the Institute. Atsuko re-enters Dr. Shima’s dream to pull him out and then continues her appointment with Detective Konakawa at a virtual bar on the internet. She discovers that he is plagued by dreams in which he is unable to solve a homicide. In the real world, two more scientists go crazy, forcing Dr. Inui to halt the manufacture of more DC Mini.

Atsuko and Dr. Tokita, an obese, childlike genius, investigate a real amusement park and find the catatonic body of Himuro, which makes Tokita sad. He assembles his own DC Mini to go into Himuro’s dream to save him but realizes once there that someone else has taken over Himuro’s body. The dream parade invades this dream as well, and Dr. Tokita is trapped. Paprika enters the dream also and finds a statue of Dr. Osanai behind a fractured dream wall, as well as the face of Dr. Inui on a tree. She awakens to see Chairman Inui with legs that look like tree roots and realizes she’s still stuck in the dream. Paprika is apparently killed by a swarm of butterflies.

Meanwhile, Konakawa is waiting in the virtual bar for Paprika’s next session when he remembers making 8mm films with a friend, which resemble elements of his dreams. In the dream world, Paprika is not dead, but pinned to a board. Dr. Osanai–who is working with Dr. Inui to gain control of people via dreams–reaches into Paprika’s body to extract the body of Atsuko. Inui takes over Osanai’s body. While the two doctors argue, Konakawa manages to enter this part of the shared dream world, save Paprika, and kill Osanai, causing his body in reality to die as well.

The dream parade arrives in town, causing the dream world and reality to merge. Paprika and Atsuko now exist as two distinct individuals–each unsure if they are the dream self of the other. A giant Dr. Inui threatens to destroy the town, drunk on the powers of his dream self. Atsuko realizes that she is actually in love with Dr. Tokita, so she merges with his dream state, which creates a giant dream baby that grows to adulthood in a matter of minutes by consuming the dream stuff and the giant Inui. The dream parade fades away, and the citizens’ safety is restored. Atsuko ends up marrying Dr. Tokita. The film ends with Paprika sending a message to Konakawa to check out a movie, Dreaming Kids, which he does.

“Don’t you think dreams and the internet are similar? They’re both areas where the repressed conscious mind vents.” – Paprika

History in the Making

The title Paprika is an unassuming name. It doesn’t provide any context to what the film may be about. Given that some popular animated films from Japan during this era, such as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) or Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) were considered fantasy films, a viewer might believe Paprika to be in the same vein. However, this film is something completely different. Directed by another person entirely, Satoshi Kon–who was responsible for the animated films Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, this animated film goes in an entirely different direction. Paprika was his last completed film before his untimely death in 2010 at the age of 46. His films deal with a blurring between fantasy and reality with a healthy dose of discussion about cinema, with Paprika being his only science-fiction work.

Japanese anime is rife with science-fiction-related content. But unlike other films reviewed on Sci-Fi Saturdays, Paprika doesn’t fit the normal mold. It doesn’t have the robotic alien futurism of Mobile Suit Gundam. Nor the dystopian and cyberpunk elements of Akira or Ghost in the Shell. This film is more fantastical due to the elements of dreams and the subconscious. The only sci-fi elements seem to be the DC Mini devices and the advanced elements of the internet. The film blurs the lines between dreams and reality, while also pointing out the similarity of filmmaking to dreams. Paprika’s real legacy though is the inspiration it would provide to future filmmakers.

Genre-fication

Watching Paprika in 2024, it’s almost impossible to ignore the similarities between this film and Christopher Nolan’s Inception–which came out in 2010. But more on that later. For viewers that would have been watching this in 2006 when it was released, there were many films that appeared to provide inspiration to the story and look of the film. The first thing that comes to mind is Dreamscape, a film about a group trying to weaponize people to go into the dreams of others to assassinate them. Dreamscape works its story without much-added technology. A second film that fits this style is Brainstorm. This film is about scientists learning to access memories and the subconscious through clunky headgear, which also puts them in touch with life after death. The DC Mini is like a smaller device from Brainstorm, or better yet, more like the SQUID technology from Strange Days.

Paprika also uses many tropes from films about dreams. Some characters receive supernatural abilities in the dream world as shown in Brazil or Waking Life, while other characters get the fake-outs of waking up from dreams only to find that they are still in the dream, something that is often seen in horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street or even Vanilla Sky. Paprika experiences all of these elements while even delving deeper into some body horror imagery with Dr. Inui’s root-like legs or Dr. Osanai reaching into her skin to pull Atsuko’s body out of the Paprika-shell. By the end of the film there are even false memories or the illusion of dreams-where characters and audience may not know what’s real and what is fake, as seen in Total Recall for example. The film also draws from the most recent cybertechnology craze and apes elements of The Matrix. Atsuko having the alter-ego of Paprika in dreams or in the internet cafe is very much like characters in The Matrix having dual identities from their real-life counterparts.

Societal Commentary

The history of fiction has stories that explore the idea between dreams and reality. From Alice in Wonderland to The Wizard of OZ, the fascination that our subconscious minds create a world that can seem as real as anything we experience while awake has always enthralled audiences. In Paprika the dream parade, which is made up of robots, dolls, anthropomorphic frogs playing musical instruments, and other iconography, represents a collective consciousness that connects the individuals in the film. Everyone has their own dreams, like Himuro’s amusement park or Konakawa’s circus. The dream parade snakes through each of their dreams, and others, connecting the world in a shared experience, as well as driving individuals insane.

This idea of the shared experience is also explored in Paprika via the idea of cinema. Films, like dreams, are both personal and shared. They each mean different things to individuals but are also a communal event where patrons sit in the dark and experience them together.  The imagery in films is a fantastical dream come to life–at least in films of that genre. But any film can transport the viewer into another time, place, or reality. Director Satoshi Kon dives deep into the world of film theory, explaining the 180º rule (a guide to blocking characters in frame so when an edit occurs the audience will not be confused by their spatial location), and building Konakawa’s dream world around the idea of cinema. He is a character who claims he hates films, yet his dream imagery is fully versed in their language and manufacture. Kon also links the internet into the equation. Still within its early decade, the use of chat rooms (like the bar Konakawa and Paprika frequent) or augmented reality creates a dreamlike quality that provides escapism–much the same way the cinema does.

The Science in The Fiction

Like many science-fiction inventions, the DC Mini was created as technology to help people. It was built to “shine new horizons” for the psychiatric treatment of patients. But it was created by Tokita, who the characters in the film see as irresponsible and naive when it comes to the security of the device. His childlike nature, which comes across as a person on the autism spectrum, is seen as a deficit in light of the theft and misuse of the DC Mini, rather than the genius it is for creating the device. The lack of safeguards on the prototypes becomes exploited by “terrorists” who use the device, not for the good it was intended, but to blast dreams and crazy ideas into innocent people’s heads.

The misuse of technology is an often-used trope in science-fiction. It stems from the anxiety of new technology and the fear of its misappropriation. And that fear is not unwarranted. History is full of examples of scientific discoveries being used in ways that were not conceived by their creators. The sci-fi films of the 1950s and their giant mutated creatures are one example of the fears surrounding atomic radiation and its effect on the world. As technology advanced, computers became the new anxiety producer. How would these devices control us? Films like The Matrix and The Lawnmower Man are examples of the technology backfiring on humanity. Paprika’s interpretation of this fear creates a much more terrifying ideal as the line between dreams and reality disappears completely.

The Final Frontier

As mentioned above, Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception appears to owe much to the ideas behind Paprika. There will be more discussion about this film in early 2025 when it shows up on my review list, but it seems like Nolan found the best parts of Paprika to integrate into his film. Both movies deal with shared dream technology, where often those dreaming are unaware that they are in another’s dream or being manipulated. The limited perception of dreaming versus reality also makes for strong thematic elements in both films. Was this just a coincidence, or was there some unwritten synergy between the two?

Paprika was an interesting film and nothing like what I expected. The trailer set a lot of expectations, but the film succeeded on many other levels. The worst thing I can say about it is that the film seemed to move too fast. Animated films obviously have different constraints from live-action films, but adding another 10-15 minutes to flesh out some of the characters further, especially the antagonists, would have made this film even better. If you are a fan of film, animated film, or the mystery of dream worlds, I recommend viewing Paprika as soon as possible.

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