Paprika - Feature Presentation

Paprika was directed by Satoshi Kon and was, unfortunately, his final film before his untimely and unfortunate passing. This is the director of such masterpieces as Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, as well as the TV show Paranoia Agent. He was also the writer of the best short in the Memories film, Magnetic Rose. Three scientists at the Foundation for Psychiatric Research fail to secure a device they've invented, the DC Mini, which allows people to record and watch their dreams. A thief is using the device to enter people's minds when awake and distract them from their own dreams with those of others. The three scientists, assisted by a police inspector, must try to identify the thief as they ward off his attacks on their own psyches. And soon, dreams, reality, and even the movies begin to merge. And if you guys have never seen Paprika, obviously I'm going to be getting into spoilers. That is a big warning for you right up front. Of course, I recommend this movie. I think it's a masterwork. You have got to see it at some point. But for those of us who have seen the movie, let's have some fun talking about it. I think we've all had experiences where someone famous that we never knew passed away, and we realized we would never see anything new from them ever again. Some have hit me worse than others, and as time goes on, that will continue to happen. But Satoshi Kon is near the top of that list. I mean, do you realize that he never even made a movie or TV show that would be considered decent or even okay? All of his works are masterpieces and are considered some of the most influential films ever made in the animation medium, and we'll never get anything else from him. And when I think about that sometimes, I genuinely get really sad. Sorry to open this video with such major downer, but all that is to say that Satoshi Kon is and has always been one of my favorite directors and will always be. And I look at his works as so integral not just to animation, but to American cinema. You've got to understand that some of our favorite movies that are on top lists everywhere were deeply inspired by Satoshi Kon's movies. There's a scene in Requiem for a Dream that is a shot-for-shot recreation of a scene in Perfect Blue. That film was directed by Darren Aronofsky, who I respect deeply, but many people look at his film Black Swan as a version of Perfect Blue. Clearly the man has an admiration for that film. Let's talk about Inception. Without a doubt, regardless of what you might ever hear, there is no world where Paprika had nothing to do with Inception. Even though Nolan has spoken at length about the fact that he had worked on that screenplay for 10 years by the time that movie was being made, which would then predate Paprika's existence, there are just too many similarities to that movie to not think that it in some way inspired him a little bit. And that's one of my biggest frustrations as an anime fan is that so many folks in the industry here in America have no clue how pivotal anime has been to inspiring entertainment in the West. And they don't give it the credit it deserves, and I don't know if they ever will. I sure hope they do. I actually recently got a chance to see Paprika in a theater because it was re-released for a few days, which was an experience that I relished every second of. I think this is one of the most gorgeously animated movies ever made. I find it endlessly inventive. The opening credit sequence for Paprika features more ideas than most movies. But what's so incredible about what Satoshi Koen pulled off with this movie is that despite the disturbing imagery, the serious subplots, the delving into the darkest parts of our psyche, this movie is hilarious. One of the funniest things the movie explores is our dream speak, the way we sometimes say nonsense in our dreams. I have a friend who comes over a lot, sometimes he hangs out and spends the night, whatever, I might be playing a video game or watching a movie in the middle of the night, and he'll just fall asleep on the couch next to me, and he'll start talking about some random shit. Truly, it's some of the funniest shit you'll ever hear in your life, so I always write it down and share it with him the next day. And in the first sequence where you see a character start to do this when they're being taken over by this thief who has the device now, it's really jarring for a second because this guy is actually awake and he's talking to his colleagues, and then all of a sudden he's babbling nonsense. I remember the first time I saw the movie, I was watching the dub, and I thought, wow, what just happened here with the translation? This is one of the worst dubs I've... oh, I see what's happening. More so than most animation, I noticed the backgrounds and the production design, you might say, of the Satoshi Kon film, especially during this amusement park sequence. The rotting surroundings and the graffiti are gorgeous, and he generates a lot of tension throughout this scene where you start to feel very on edge because these characters are exploring something, and the way Satoshi Kon tells the story is he doesn't really come out and let you know everything that's happening in a sort of step-by-step way. He doesn't have a scene like an Inception where DiCaprio explains things to everyone and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is on the chair and Tom Hardy tips the chair so you get it. Brilliant scene in Inception. I'm not knocking Inception in any way. It's a fantastic movie still, but what Satoshi Kon does is not as mainstream in that he just kind of lets you follow the characters, and they're talking about their jobs like they're the employees of a company, and they understand exactly what they're doing, and they're not necessarily explaining it to some third party that's watching them in a movie theater or at home. Something I've always found very fascinating about the movie is the exploration of the Paprika character herself and her place in the movie, because clearly when our protagonist Atsuko Chiba enters Dreams, she becomes Paprika. That's like her dream alter ego, but there are also moments in the movie where Paprika seems to keep her from danger, warning her away from things, almost like she's looking out for her. And when it comes to that, it almost seems like Kon is saying that all of us have this aspect of our subconscious or perhaps our intuition that keeps us from making really big mistakes, and we should listen to that part of ourselves. But I could also be way off base, which is absolutely fine. In fact, I love that I don't know everything about this movie and probably never will. So you really do have to pay attention when you watch Paprika, and I have found that on subsequent viewings, I have discovered things I never noticed before, elements of the plot even, that escaped me on the first couple of viewings. This film also has lengthy sequences where characters discuss filmmaking techniques and movies. Our lead detective in the film doesn't want to watch movies anymore. He doesn't exactly know why, but something about the act of watching a movie really bothers him. Of course, we peel back the layers eventually to understand that when he was younger, he was an independent filmmaker, and he always wanted to make movies for real, and he was shooting a movie when a collaborator on the film died, and then he never finished the movie, and this has haunted him subconsciously for a very long time. And you get to watch as this guy connects the dots between something that's in the back of his mind, a sort of ghostly apparition that keeps asking him, what about the rest of it? This line initially is used as a question at the end of this detective's very strange dream in the beginning of the movie, almost to ask, why isn't this dream continuing? What happens next? Which is a beautiful way to relate to filmmaking in general, that filmmaking is like dreaming, that making a movie is like watching a dream. You're creating a dream, and you're sharing it with others, and not finishing a movie is like waking up in the middle of a dream wondering what could have happened next if you had just stayed asleep. And in essence, him not finishing his movie is like he destroyed that former part of himself. He became someone else and abandoned who he used to be, which if anyone's ever tried to make a film and then given up, you know that that is a perfectly apt description of what that feels like. It is like saying goodbye to a version of yourself. Near the end of the film, as dreams and reality seem to be converging in various ways, I kind of just watched it with my mouth hanging open, truly in awe of everything that was on the screen. And this is a film that came out in 2006, and I do think it still looks better than animated films of today, and I will probably think that in 20 years and 30 years, and I'm just probably going to think that forever. This film is absolutely breathtaking. Near the end of the film, the detective finally gets over his fear of going to the movies, and the last shot of the film is him purchasing a ticket for a movie. In a rather bittersweet choice, this is a ticket for Satoshi Kon's next film, which he was working on at the time of his death, which is even more tragic to me now, that he was just had all these plans, and I just wish that we could have seen more movies from him up until today. I mean, can you imagine seeing Mamoru Hosoda movies, Makoto Shinkai movies, another Hayao Miyazaki movie? We've gotten more Isao Takahata films since Paprika came out, like The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, like all of these great movies. Plus, we still could have had Satoshi Kon movies. It's going to get under my skin for the rest of my life. So I made this video not just to talk about how much I love Paprika, but also as a sort of therapeutic device to discuss my feelings on Satoshi Kon and that I'll never get to see another one of his films or television shows ever again, and I'm glad because I do feel a little bit better now, actually, and seeing the film in theaters really gave me a whole new view of it because I've only ever gotten to see it at home. I felt the same way when I saw Tokyo Godfathers in theaters. Guys, thank you so much for continuing to watch Feature Presentation. Look forward to more videos very soon, and if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.