Among the makers of Japanese anime, director Satoshi Kon has carved out his own smart, grown-up approach. Not much is cutesy or kid-related about Kon’s films, which range from the disturbing “Perfect Blue” to the warmly sentimental “Tokyo Godfathers.”
Kon extends his remarkable track record with his new one, “Paprika,” a dazzling futuristic lark. This crazy movie is overflowing with creativity, and it even has a story you can follow – not always a feature of anime films.
Scientists have developed a device that allows people to enter each other’s dreams. There are some interesting possibilities for science, and especially dream therapy, but hey – we don’t really care about that.
What happens here is that the device falls into the wrong hands. So when one of the scientists begins spouting nonsense and marching through hallways in his own imagined parade, it seems the device is being used to drag the unsuspecting into somebody else’s wacky dream.
What can save mankind? Only a committed doctor, Atsuko – who also exists in the dreamworld as her saucy alter ego, Paprika. (I know, I should have said “spicy” alter ego, but I couldn’t quite do it.) Paprika is well-known to dreamers everywhere; she’s kind of the unavoidable Paris Hilton of the communal dreamscape.
There’s also a detective, whose own dreams contain a sequence of hair-raising events (a fight on a moving train, a Tarzan fantasy) that have come straight out of the movies. He’s clearly got issues.
This story carries us from one visually extravagant scene to the next. Because Satoshi Kon is animating not only the vaguely futuristic real world, but also the anything-goes world of dreams, he’s got endless opportunities to make cartoon magic.
In particular, he keeps returning to this grand parade of giant animals, creepy grinning dolls and household appliances. The parade becomes more ominous as it gets larger during the film. That alone is a visual coup for the animators.
And “Paprika” isn’t just a trippy, anything-goes experience. It’s structured in a tight, logical way, so that the action carries through to the film’s final line of dialogue, which ties together what we’ve seen before. There aren’t many live-action movies with enough savvy to pull that off.
Some scenes from “Paprika.”
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