#2 "Paprika" (2006)

I love this movie.

I first saw "Paprika," Satoshi Kon's animated sci-fi masterpiece, at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York. I knew nothing going in other than "Animated... something to do with dreams... Japanese... good buzz." I came out thrilled with the beautiful, trippy imagery and dream logic of the film, but with very little idea of whether it actually made any sense.

Watching it again at the beginning of last year, I was even more impressed by the film's richness and depth. Countless great little things are there to be seen or noticed on repeat viewings and, although I'm sure you could find plot-holes, Kon's story does indeed make sense, building a gorgeous, disturbing and very human world where reality and identity are fluid. Kon's narrative discipline and attention to detail is staggering - in 90 minutes he deftly weaves a smart, compelling plot set in a world with its own complex rules and logic. Kon does this with a minimum of hand-holding, while always giving you enough information to understand what's going on - even if all that information can be difficult to take in on a first viewing.

I couldn't wait to watch it again at the start of this year and I was not disappointed. "Paprika" is an exceptionally well-made film. This is eye-candy of the most nutritious kind with shots whose beauty and visual wit only gets richer with each viewing, but whose focus never strays from telling the story and exploring the character of our heroine and her titular alter-ego. Supporting these visuals, are solid, expressive voice-acting and top-notch sound design. The sound of the parade of dreams / nightmares in particular really gets under my skin - in the best possible way.

"Paprika" makes thrilling and entertaining cinema out of the ideas and questions provoked by its central conceit - a brand new form of technology which not only lets others see and hear your dreams, but allows them to enter them (and, as it turns out, also do much much more). The one weakness I really noticed this time around is the bad guy - where the other characters seem to have lives, depth and relationships beyond the frame, the "dream terrorist" really does feel like he acts and talks primarily to move the plot and embody one single idea.

My fascination with dreams and with movies have always been linked. I'm remembering now that when I was twelve years old and missed (due to illness) an assignment to write a movie review for English class, I instead wrote a review of one of my dreams from that week. Kon plays with the connections between dreams and filmmaking with self-aware wit (including a short, sweet tutorial on what "crossing the line of action" means when shooting coverage). After all, movies and dreams both create complex narratives in a very limited amount of time, narratives we experience in a dark space through our senses of sight and hearing.

And yet, only a handful of filmmakers (including Fellini and Tarkovsky) really nail what makes dreams so magical and disturbing - the way that they convince us in the moment that they are real, while being so surreal in their form. As with "Perfect Blue" and "Millenium Actress," Kon is a master of moving between the worlds of reality, dreams and film while telling a great story.

Satoshi Kon died of pancreatic cancer aged 46 in 2010, leaving his last feature film unfinished (the appropriately titled "Dream Machine," which may yet be completed one day). I am so sorry he will not continue to create the kind of amazing, visionary work of his four features, but "Paprika" is a hell of a high note to go out on.

From his farewell blog post (posted posthumously as Kon did not want others worrying about his illness while he was dying):

"With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. - Well, I'll be leaving now."