Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Spice
Girl
(Paprika, 9/10/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Lately
the question arises: what's the point of big screen animation? The science
of computer imagery, after all, has rendered it possible to visualize
virtually anything imaginable, with more or less seamless realism. In
search of optimal box office demographics, Hollywood live action has
become ever more cartoony, while cartoons themselves (e.g. Toy Story,
Shrek, The Incredibles) are now as smart-alecky as live action,
nudging adults in the ribs as they try to entertain the kids. The result
is slick, overproduced animation that seems designed for everyone and
no one.
Satoshi Kon's superb Paprika
is a reminder of why anyone should bother to make animated movies. To
be sure, it's definitely not for kids—at least not for ones in
young bodies. Instead, it is the kind of film that Luis Bunuel was referring
to when he took a straight razor to a moviegoer's eyeball in the silent
classic Un Chien Andalou (1929). Like the work of Kon's countryman
Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle), it stretches
the limits of what we expect of Japanese anime.
Based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui,
Paprika does for our dreams roughly what The Matrix did
for waking life. The boffins at some technical institute have invented
the ultimate tool for psychotherapy: a device that allows outsiders
to watch—and even to enter—the dreams of their patients. The
means to network, naturally, implies the power to infect. When the dream
device is stolen, the nightmares of some begin to invade others'; before
long the very barrier between dreaming and reality blurs.
Paprika, the flame-haired dreamland
alter-ego of a soft-spoken psychologist (voiced by Megumi Hayashibara)
dives to the rescue. To be sure, how Paprika saves the day, how the
contagion of nightmares works, or even what many of the characters are
talking about much of the time, isn't exactly clear. That the post-traumatic
obsessions of hard-boiled detective (Akio Ôtsuka) fit into the
proceedings seems more arbitrary than logical. Nor do we ever learn
why the protagonist is named after a condiment common in Hungarian cuisine.
The pleasures of Paprika,
however, have nothing to do with its scenario. When we watch a parade
of kewpie dolls led by a samurai and a marching refrigerator, or the
head of a villain blossom into a explosion of blue butterflies, we are
too dazzled to remember our confusion. Instead of the "seen it
all, done it all" jadedness of Hollywood animation, Kon gives us
the deceptive innocence of anime, verging into haunting creepiness.
All it lacks, thankfully, is the adolescent sexuality—the gratuitous
panty flashes, the up—skirt shots-typical of the genre.
Kon's movie may have much more on
its mind than anyone might expect of a feature cartoon. "Contagious
nightmare" is one way of conceiving of some varieties of religious
belief—it probably isn't an accident that the victims in the story
show their infection by speaking in tongues. Like Christian theology
or Mormon historical myth, some dreams—and Paprika—can
be difficult to explain to outsiders without seeming ridiculous. Whatever
this nightmare meant, I didn't want it to end.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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