Paprika

[randy_byers]

"Does it make more sense the second time?" holyoutlaw asked.

"Yup," I said. "It actually does. Not that it necessarily adds up to anything earthshaking."

We had just seen the anime movie, Paprika (Papurika, 2006), at the Varsity. I had already seen it once over the weekend, but I was happy to see it again. The movie is apparently based on a metafictional science fiction novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, and the story reminds me to some extent of Pat Cadigan's cyberpunk novel, Mindplayers. It's about an experimental device called the DC-Mini that allows therapists direct access to their patients' dreams. Three of the devices are stolen, and suddenly dreams start popping up in the weirdest places. Paprika is the dreamland alter ego of the therapist, Dr. Chiba, and they are the composite protagonist. Paprika is a red-headed wishfulfillment superheroine with a jaunty pop song for her soundtrack.

While all of this leads to an appealing, if initially confusing and not particularly original, narrative, much of what I like about this movie is the visual phantasmagoria and general trippiness. We are never sure whether we are inside a dream or not at any given moment (story of my life!), and the narrative frame keeps shifting unexpectedly. On the second time through, it does make more sense, but in some ways that just means it makes more nonsense, because it is dream logic, which is frequently absurd. The director, Satoshi Kon, seems to be channeling his own subconscious imagery, both symbolic and narrative, and despite frequent pseudo-scientific exposition, it doesn't necessarily make rational sense. It's more of a carnival ride through dreamland, and it explicitly links the movie-watching experience to the dreamstate. (One of the wonderful throw-away bits is when characters dive into a TV screen and come out of the camera that's filming what was on the screen.)

It's a trippy visual feast, is what I've been saying -- a riot of weird, fanciful imagery. It's playing at the Varsity still tonight, but I'm not sure if it'll stick around for another week. Possibly it'll move to a smaller screen at the Metro for an additional week, because I believe it was showing at a second theater downtown somewhere, too, which means there was an expectation of an audience for it around here.

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I watched the first four episodes of Paranoia Agent last night. Loved it! I'm hooked! It was two-for-one night at Rain City Video, so I rented the second disk too. Can't wait to see the rest of the series. I love the way that there seem to be clues planted in the opening and ending credits. It's all very mysterious and compelling and more than a little bit creepy.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

Hello again, been distracted by work and stuff.

Glad you're enjoying (enjoyed by now?) Paranoia Agent. I just thought I'd draw attention to this, which is from the Wikipedia page on the program:

Many of the characters in Paranoia Agent are often referred to with animal names, especially in each "Prophetic Vision" (a segment at the end of each episode that previews the next) and the episode "The Holy Warrior," in which some characters are depicted as animal-like creatures. In many cases, their Japanese names translate directly to the type of animal which they are referred to as: "sagi" means heron, "kawazu" is an archaic term for frog, "ushi" means cow, "tai" means sea bream or red snapper, "cho" means butterfly (cho-cho can also mean butterfly, possibly alluding to her split personality), and "hiru" means leech. Kamome means seagull.

I've not really read the rest of the article in case there are spoilers but there's interesting stuff in that. It also ties in to things like the chalk drawings that the old man makes, the mid-episode breaks and so on. Just little additions of meaning that have got lost in translation really.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I've watched the whole series now, and there was certainly a lot more going on in the background than I could absorb. Very interesting story arc, with every episode almost a different genre -- perhaps a genre unto itself. I think Kon has said somewhere that the series was in some ways a byproduct of the three movies he had done before it. It was a chance for him to take leftover ideas that didn't fit in the movies and see where they took him.

The final disk of the Region 1 set, which has the final three episodes, has commentary by the director (Kon), the writer, and the producer. They had some interesting things to say about the opening credits and the ending credits and the mid-episode breaks and Prophetic Visions, although they mostly talk about various aspects of the production process. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that I seem to have been misreading some things. I'll have to watch the whole thing again at some point to see what it looks like now that I know where it's going.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the region 2 version has those commentaries; I hope so. I have seen the first half dozen episodes a couple of times as I rewatched them recently when I managed to find the third and fourth disk going cheap. It certainly warrants a re-viewing, and I wouldn't be at all surprised that after seeing how it all ends new light will be shed on a lot of earlier events.