Movie Review: Paprika

I’ve finally watched the most famous Satoshi Kon film, at least in my sphere. I had never heard of Millennium Actress or Perfect Blue, but Paprika and Tokyo Godfathers are on every must-watch anime movie list.

What this film cemented for me is that in the Satoshi Kon universe, the most powerful creatures are girls who can skip around the world. Paprika is visually striking in a way that sets it apart from Millennium Actress - beautiful, but unexpectedly so - and Perfect Blue, the most standard animation of the films so far. I am noticing a few trends at this point. First, Kon’s use of the grotesque. Whether it’s the stalker in Perfect Blue or the officers/villains in Millennium Actress, it is perhaps more pronounced in Paprika with the surreal dolls and how much attention is placed on Tokita, the obese inventor of the DC mini. Second, there is always some weird fucking shit with women which hasn’t aged well at all. It seems contrived and dull, and more importantly takes away from the big messages that his films are trying to convey about the nature of reality, lived experience, and perception. I don’t need a great film like Paprika to end with some bullshit about the hot, up-tight girl falling for the nerd who is unwilling to change in any way. I don’t need to belabor the point of what type of dynamic that reinforces. Third, endings that are pretty objectively poor. Millennium Actress is by far the word offender, but Paprika’s is still quite poor. In all three films I have seen thus far, I can unequivocally say that in each case the last few lines of dialogue being cut would substantially improve the overall feeling of these films. Lastly, I think that Kon’s films have left an indelible mark because of how capacious they are as sources of interpretation. In each of the films, the nature of reality is the central focus. In Paprika, it’s your dreams. In Millennium Actress, it’s your memories. And, in Perfect Blue, it’s perception - your self perception and how it can be manipulated by other’s view of you. This is why I make the point about the endings. What I appreciate about each of these films is that you can walk away with vastly different feelings and understandings of what the point of the film is, but by trying to answer anything in the final moments spoils that moment.

The films do enough, on their own, that the viewer understands the themes even if we don’t know the explicit message. Let us walk away with something of our own. I will also say that this film is insane visually. Not just the colors, which on their own deserve praise, but the scene where Konokawa is walking in the hallway and it begins to warp, just watching each step was brilliant. Watching Paprika seamlessly hop into picture frames and fly into a new world never got old. Overall, I think Perfect Blue is the most impactful of the films I’ve watched, Paprika is the most striking visually, and Millennium Actress may be my favorite because it taps so deeply into a sense of nostalgia and melancholy that I see so much less often in film.