Paprika

Okay! Here we are then, 2011 and that false sense of renewed optimism permeates through all of us as it does at the beginning of every year. For me, that means a new attempt at blogging, and an over-reaching attempt at watching films, by my reckoning around 260 films in a year, substantially curbed from last year's ridiculous 365.

My aim this year, to keep things interesting by inviting themes into the forum. "What's a theme?" You might ask. Well I will try to figure that out, I have a few ideas that I will unleash in the coming weeks. But now on to this week where we are dealing with films about dreams.

Dreams provide film-makers a great grounds for exploration as in dreams, the laws of physics can be completely thrown out. Anything can happen in a dream. Inexplicable and nonsensical events can simply be explained away by the fact that "it was all a dream." This can be embraced as a means of delivering off the wall visuals and larger than life characters or as a lazy plot device, designed to block questions. Hopefully this week will provide examples from both camps.

Which brings us to the first film of the week. Paprika is a film that deals with the idea that somewhere in the future, scientists have conceived a device that allows people to get inside the dreams of others and twist them around to disrupt their normal activity.

Sound familiar? There are those on the internet who believe that Christopher Nolan's Inception owes a debt to Satoshi Kon's 2006 sci-fi epic. Though the similarities are, on paper, quite large, Paprika is an entirely different beast.



Though Nolan said he was inspired by seeing Paprika, he could have stopped watching after five minutes and Inception would have turned out the same as it's really only the technology involved here that he has borrowed. But that's enough about that.

Paprika follows a team of scientists trying to recover their technology, which allows them to see into, record and replay dreams, after it has fallen into the wrong hands. As they search, they begin to realise that the culprit is using the device to attack people's minds with their worst nightmares and those of others.

The result is a typically Japanese exploration of Technology vs. Nature. Culminating in some very entertaining final battles between tree-like creatures and child-like robots. What happens in between is utterly bewildering, but very enjoyable.



Paprika does a great job of recreating the environment of dreams. When we follow troubled detective, Toshimi, through his recurring dream, we see distorted images from his real-life coupled with bizarre looking characters completely removed from the reality we have established in the film.

But this is another of the film's strengths. The reality we are provided in the film is often integrated seamlessly with the dreams we see, often jarring images that we see come from being immersed in the dreams and the thing that shocks us most is reality and by the end, I can honestly say I had more or less completely lost track of which was which.

It is a film that deals well with the intellectual details of the plot and makes great use of them for its own ecological argument. The characters can be a little flat, but perhaps this is to further enhance the dream-like character of Paprika, elevating her from the boredom that those stuck in reality seem to portray.

And yes, in the end it does struggle to achieve any real emotional pay-off. In terms of visual achievement and, staying true to an increasingly insane plot, Paprika is very successful. The storyline of the detective and his struggle to decipher his dream is the only one that is likely to resonate emotionally, which makes its resolution a little bit disappointing. But the last fifteen minutes that see dreams and reality completely fused together are completely inspired. Again almost Inception-like as we see rooms collapse on themselves, people flying through paintings, turning into sea creatures, etc. The imagination and the colours on show make this film an interesting and memorable entry and chances are you might relive parts of it in your own dreams.

7/10