Living the dream

>>Satoshi Kon on bringing the subconscious
to life, suppressed sexual desires, the
meaning of trash and his psychedelic
new anime Paprika

by MARK SLUTSKY
Interview translated by
MEILING GO
and BRIAN KOBO

Filmmaking and dreaming have always been intertwined, since the earliest days of cinema—the description of a movie as a dreamlike state even has its own adjective, oneiric. Satoshi Kon’s new film Paprika< is definitely oneiric. A surrealism-tinged anime from the director of Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue,Paprika is not only about the mysterious act of dreaming, but in many ways, it follows the very logic of the subconscious itself.

Based on the novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui, the story of Paprika revolves around a device called the DC Mini, a Cronenbergian instrument that allows therapists to enter their patients’ dreams and help them work out their psychological problems. Chief among these mental explorers is Dr. Atsuko Chiba, who manifests in her patient’s dreams as the red-headed, playful Paprika, who acts as a combination therapist and guide.

When prototypes of the DC Mini are stolen, however, it begins to cause real havoc, as the unknown thief is able to enter people’s dreams without permission, and with potentially deadly results. It’s up to Chiba/Paprika, her team of co-workers and a troubled police detective, Kogawa Toshimi, to figure out what’s going on and who’s behind the strange, sinister parade of bizarre characters and junk that seems to permeate the victim’s dream worlds.

Psychedelic complexities

A simple plot description, though, doesn’t do the complexities of Paprika justice. Kon creates a psychedelic, imaginative and gorgeous world where images and characters follow a strange, but somehow comprehensible, dream logic. Kon makes the dream/movie connection explicitly clear—for instance, in a scene where Detective Toshimi, dressed as Akira Kurosawa, explains the basic rules of camera placement to Paprika.

“I do think filmmaking and dreaming have a lot in common,” Kon says, in an email to the Mirror from Japan. “The dreams we have while we are sleeping are, in a sense ‘my unexpected movies.’ The dreamer himself is the main character, and the scenes and the script are unconsciously related to him. It’s actually rare for dreams to have a logical course of events, and most of the time we don’t even understand what our dreams are trying to tell us.

“On the other hand, movies generally have a logical course of events, plus the surge of excitement at the climax, and themes that can be expressed after the conclusion. If dreams are ‘my unexpected movies,’ we could refer to movies as ‘dreams that everyone can sit back and enjoy.’ In other words, they’re ‘unconscious movies’ and ‘conscious movies,’ respectively.”

Unconscious freedom

The movie’s unconscious setting gave Kon tremendous freedom in playing with images and ideas. “I made Paprika into a movie so that I could free my creativity,” he says. “With the movies I’d directed before, I’d had in mind that even if the stories took place within a realistic framework, they could’ve turned into great fantasies just from a shift in viewpoint. However, I started noticing that constructing the movie world within such a realistic framework limited what I drew. Even if it was technically possible to portray more things, with the ideas themselves limited, we had no chance to put that technique to use. With that dilemma in mind, I chose Paprika as my grand project to expand my imagination.”

Of course, in a context where a filmmaker can do more or less anything, some limits were needed to prevent the film from turning into complete, beautiful chaos. In fact, one of the most interesting things about Paprika is how so much that appears random and disconnected at first, is logically resolved by the film’s end.

“The dream world is the world where ‘anything goes,’ so I did have to set certain rules for this film, and it was very tough,” Kon says. “It was as if you’re playing a sport while creating the rules for it. As you can imagine, it was very difficult sharing the rules with the other staff members in this irregular process. So, after all, the director—myself—ended up having to make arbitrary decisions. Depending on the situation I would say, ‘This is okay in Paprika’s dream world,’ or ‘This is NOT okay.’ The rules were pretty much lax in the screenwriting stage, and I made the final decisions in the storyboard stage. The storyboards needed detailed focus, and they ended up as the most detailed and biggest in all my career; it took me so long to finish them. It was like a nightmare!”

NEW NIGHTMARES: Kon’s surreal vision

Sex and trash

From the first image of Paprika waking up in bed with the Detective, after a particularly intense therapy session, Paprika has an undeniably eroticized overtone. “Since dreams reflect suppressed sexual desires, I thought it was indispensable to this movie, which has got a lot to do with dreams,” Kon says. “The depiction of sex is more overt in the original novel—if we kept the same kind of atmosphere in the film version, it would be pornographic. But if we eliminated the sexual overtones, the dreams would just be an eccentric theme park. The scary, dark side of dreams would be lost. Dreams are fun and mysterious, and at the same time, they scare you beyond your imagination.”

For that matter, one of Paprika’s most memorable and haunting images is the parade of strange characters, objects and shapes that make their way through the dreamers’ minds. It’s simultaneously festive and freaky and very unsettling. “We needed a symbolic image of dreams, especially nightmares—something you would recognize as a nightmare right away, as soon as it appears on the screen,” Kon says. “From the beginning, I was against the idea of using dark imagery to express nightmares, like what you see in other movies and comic books.

“Instead, I imagined a nightmare that is creepy because it was so blissful. The concept of a ‘parade of trash’ was born. In the parade you can see religious objects like a shrine gate and a statue of Buddha, traditional Japanese images like the Manekineko (beckoning cat) and the Daruma doll, and outdated cars and household appliances. They were all chosen because they were somewhat ‘trashed.’ For example, people are less religious compared to 100 years ago, and traditional icons have lost their real meanings and are now mere fashion items. And during the years of rapid economic growth, people have thrown away cars and appliances that can still be used, repeatedly going through the buy-and-trash cycles. As I thought about the trash, I cultivated the image of them coming back to life through the dream world. I saw the parallels between that ‘trash’ and the suppressed dreams and the unconscious state that people of the modern age have ignored.”

Paprika opens this Friday, Aug. 24

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