2006 animeRating: 15/20 (Mark: 12/20)
Plot: Some fiend's stolen a dream machine, and it's up to a scientist and her titular alter-ego to save humanity. Or something like that. Honestly, I wasn't nearly smart enough to figure out what the hell was going on here.
But I liked what I was looking at! This stretches the elastic boundaries of what animation can do, dips deep inside the old noggin, scrambles things around, and leaves you baffled but aesthetically pleased. I thought the story was frustratingly incoherent, but that might not be the movie's fault. Then again, my brother's reasonably intelligent and was also confused, so maybe it was the movie's fault. He's not seen Inception, a film that seems to have borrowed a lot of this one's ideas--Jello floors, elevator rides through the subconscious, frog musicians. I have seen Inception which might have given me an advantage although I did have an extra obstacle in trying to avoid thinking about Leonardo Dicaprio. The guy's just dreamy. On second thought, I'm not sure there were frogs in Inception. I think part of the problem for me (and again, keep in mind that I'm a dumb guy) is that I had trouble understanding the motivations of most of the characters. There's a character we never really get to meet who befuddled me, and the villain's logic never really made much sense to me. But again, I did appreciate the manic creativity and goofy surrealism, and cartoon nudity always is good for a bonus point or two. I don't see how there could have possibly been enough room on a storyboard for all the ideas that show up on screen here. You get walking refrigerators, giant headed guys, butterfly girls, talking dolls, musical animals. The screen's just filled with this stuff, and even though a lot of the imagery was redundant, I looked forward to seeing that parade. As much as I enjoyed the cartoon visually, however, I hated it aurally. The soundtrack, other than the cute and unhinged parade music, was irritating. A lot of times, I watch a movie like this (Synecdoche, New York; anything from Czechoslovakia; You've Got Mail) and think that if I just watched it a second time, I'd understand it all a lot better. I think I could watch Paprika a dozen times and still not figure out what was going on.
OK, what other Oprah Movie Clubbers got a chance to see this one? What did you think?
13 comments:
Watching tonite.
i think you gave it a 15 because you didnt want to appear stupid. i gave it a 12 for the same reason.
i didnt think about the character motivations, but now that i think about it????????????????????????????
I'm not sure there's any hope for me in the "Don't want to appear stupid" department.
I was so entertained by this thing visually. I'm a sucker for fake movie dream science, and I think it's for stuff like this that made God give mankind the ability to animate.
And by the way, I read a plot synopsis on Wikipedia and it looks like we understood the movie perfectly.
the characters were a little flat. literally! HA!
Valid argument.
Do you think anybody else saw this? Literally?
Yeah, I definitely get how you'd be frustrated by the plotting in this one. For me, I'm so intrigued by what's going on I'm willing to fill in the gaps with my own pseudo-logic. I sense enough intelligence in it that I assume they know what they're talking about. Maybe I'm being a little too lenient, but I wrote off a lot of the incongruous stuff, like the music that plays over the title credits, as Japanisms.
I've seen it twice now, and I think Paprika hangs together with multiple views. For instance, some of the dialogue that seems like babble is actually a description of what the babbler is seeing in their dreams, and it helps if you know the parade is coming up so you can read it in that context. I thought the bad guys, Osanai and the chairman, both make their motivations quite clear early in the movie, and it's only the Himuro red herring that deflects suspicion (granted, no one knows who the hell Himuro is).
And some of the ideas in it stuck with me. I like how it plays out the battle between the subconscious minds of the characters, and how the severe and not-particularly-warm main character actually has the most potent inner life. I guess if you vibe on the hard sci-fi element, characters aren't really necessary anyway, but I think some of the characters in this do have motivations. It's neat that although the inventor is frighteningly obese, at least they made him frighteningly smart, too. The same director did Tokyo Godfathers with a really, really campy drag queen in a central role and gets it just right, so good for Satoshi Kon for taking characters that are ripe for cliche and giving them some meat. I found Osanai, the main character's partner, effectively creepy. He tells her in the car that he's jealous and feels powerless next to her, and then in his dreams he's got a giant statute of himself and imagines tearing off her clothes while she's pinned to a table. Eww.
I appreciate this movie in light of how terrible I thought Inception was. I found that movie had many of the same complaints, but also less inspiration and less heart. Who the hell are all those team members in that movie? I get that Ellen Page is the eye candy, but the rest of them confused me. The exposition where they laid out the rules of the dream world was the best part of the movie, which just shows to go ya they were all ideas but no story. I really hated how it degenerated into a machine gun fight with terrorists on snowmobiles. You cannot do a movie about dreams without batshit crazy surrealism, I won't have it. Paprika understands that in a dream, a walking refrigerator is as terrifying as a terrorist with a machine guy.
I think I gave 'Inception' the same grade, so I didn't think it was terrible. I think I'd go lower if I saw it again even though Cory told me I would give it a 37/20 if I saw it in a theater. I believe Nolan did say this was an inspiration for his big dream movie.
'Tokyo Godfathers' was on a "see this" list that I had a while back. So was another Kon movie. I just don't think about anime that much, I guess.
I wondered about your interest in dreaming, Matt. This movie pick and an entire radio show dedicated to the subject. I don't know much about the topic and (frustratingly) I don't remember any of my dreams. That's part of the reason I like movies so much, I think, especially surreal movies. They help fill the gaps in my life left by 'not dreaming'...
Dreams should reveal a bit about the dreamer. Maybe the characters in this aren't really as flat as Rio Blanco and I thought then. They're characterized through their subconsciouses rather than the traditional movie way--their actions, words, ect. You're right about what is revealed about Osanai in his dreams. What about our heroine? Her persona and name changes into this superhero of the subconscious, but she's not being changed into a giant shadowy omnipotent being or a robot or a doll or anything too strange.
I'm going to take part of my spring break and make a list of dream movies. So far, here's what I've got:
Paprika
Inception
Dumbo
I'll keep working on it!
You're right about my interest in dreaming, but I hadn't really thought about it. I don't have an incredibly active, lucid dream life, but I've kept a dream journal on and off, which is occasionally hilarious. I think I just really appreciate surrealism in art, and I'm in awe of any movie/book/image etc that nails dreaming because it's so hard to get it right and so easy to do it wrong.
Neat observation about Paprika being less grandiose than the other characters' projections. Is it saying that her advantage is in being flexible and humble?
I just read today that Satoshi Kon died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer. I guess that means Paprika is his last opus, although his studio is working on a film he planned before his death. I thought Tokyo Godfathers was pretty great, and it's much more character-oriented than Paprika, so it might make for an interesting contrast.
I see you didn't much care for Science of Sleep, but I know you'll enjoy Dumbo. "Pink Elephants on Parade" is a revelation.
science of sleep was just somewhat uncomfortable
Uncomfortable?
I've meant to watch 'The Science of Sleep' again because I think I was sick and irritable when I watched it a few years ago. It always seems like something I should like. I just don't get around watching movies multiple times because of this dumb blogging.
I liked this film to a point, but was a little frustrated trying to figure it out, and a little creeped out by the animation (animated nudity?). A 13.
That last one was me, by the way
Ah, c'mon Cory...I expected a comparison/contrast to 'Inception' from you!
I love animated nudity almost as much as the real thing. I hope I didn't type that outloud.
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