Movies You Should See: “Paprika” Is A Dream Exploring The Deeper Meaning Of Dreams

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t just recommended but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but the films like that in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the current situation concerning the COVID virus, and my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series. However, I plan to continue it even after I get vaccinated.

Very slight spoiler warning It’s no secret among movie snobs and anime nerds, Christopher Nolen’s beloved 2010 thriller “Inception” is arguably a rip off of the 2006 anime film “Paprika” from Japan. However, I will not be the first to say this, but “Paprika” is so much better, and handles the same themes as “Inception” with so much more depth, as it moves away from simply being a thriller about a detective running through dreams, and becomes partly a story about a detective whose life is a thin line between the nature of dreams and the reality he deals with. “Paprika” becomes a fiction about the discomfort and effect of fiction on very real people. The story takes place in the near future, where a newly created device called “DC Mini” is created by a team of scientists to help people in a psych ward with problematic dreams. Dr. Atsuko Chiba starts to use the machine to illegally help patients, by entering their dreams, and enlist her alter ego, Paprika, a young woman who is a dream of hers, to help her, help them. To test out the machines, she enters the dreams of the chair of the department, Doctor Shima, who’s dreams she finds nonsensical, a parade of colourful random oddballs and questionable human figures, in lush awe inspiring animation that is both beautiful to look at and frightening to ponder. When Paprika is captured, and can’t escape the dream, a detective Toshimi Kanazawa is enlisted by her, who himself is plagued by reoccurring dream, mostly with the recurring image of his deceased friend who dreamed of making movies with him, about ironically, cops and robbers, and mysteries, instead of the real version he became of it. The real version isn’t nearly as exciting but just as haunting. Kanazawa is asked to solve the case of Shima, who killed herself in her dream, and ironically asked by Paprika in a dream, creating a vortex where no one can escape their dreams. The movie becomes something of a fever dream itself, with a brilliant script co-written by the director of the film, Satoshi Kon, based on the 1993 novel by Japanese science fiction author Yasutaka Tsutsui. The animation is beautiful and the film itself seems like it should be more confusing than it is, but it isn't and has a story you can actually follow. Various YouTube compilations will compare scenes side by side of “Paprika” and “Inception” and while I think Christopher Nolan is a great filmmaker, and his “Dark Knight” trilogy is the best of all Batman movies, I wasn’t to into “Inception”, finally it overstuffed, but I was very into “Paprika” when I saw it years later. “Paprika” has the thing that “Inception” missed, I felt, that the dream setting was more then a twist, but the very nature of dreams is worth exploring, and who this detective feels like he is, unfiltered and, unlike Leonard DiCaprio’s character, in “Inception” has a less clichéd motivation. He isn’t dreaming of seeing his kids again, but of the life he wanted to lead, in a dream factory like film. The film ends, though, on a similar but much more simple note that has something to do with kids in a different way. After years of not being able to go to the movies, he simply decides to give himself a break and do so, bringing up an old love of his, and quietly buys a ticket to a children’s film.