Post by klep on Nov 23, 2020 9:19:34 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 11/23: Paprika
ANIMATION WEEK!
"What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." - Morpheus
One motif that is present in almost all of Satoshi Kon's work is the blurring of reality and unreality. He loved to explore that liminal space where fact and fancy meet and become one. In Hitchcockian thriller Perfect Blue a woman's grasp on reality slowly disintegrates amidst fears of a stalker and plots against her career. Millenium Actress sees a television crew drop into and out of the memories of the aging actress they're interviewing. And Kon's series Paranoia Agent deals with a shared public delusion of a violent criminal.
Paprika was Kon's final feature film and the one where this motif most fully became theme. The primary conceit of the film is a device called the DC Mini which lets people view and even enter the dreams of others. It was developed as a tool for use with psychiatric patients, but one has been stolen and the researchers are trying to track it down.
We get to see how the device is put to both good and nefarious purposes. Paprika, the alter-ego of Dr. Atsuko Chiba (Hayashibara Megumi), has been using it without authorization to provide psychiatric treatment to people outside of the company, including Detective Toshimi Konakawa (Ōtsuka Akio). But the devices do not have access controls, allowing anyone to enter another's dreams and corrupt their perceptions of reality, warping their minds with a dream of a parade that can only be described as viral. Ultimately the dreams and reality begin to merge, threatening a cataclysm.
The film explores how technology creates a shared subconcious, and the ways that subconscious can manifest itself in the world. The famous parade sequence at the climax shows the dream world merging with reality in a literal sense, but we also see how Konakawa has become the detective he was playing in the film short he was making as a teenager. "Truth has the structure of a fiction" says the mystery man from Konakawa's dream, and our world is full of examples of stories becoming truth both for good or ill. Just, usually they don't include people literally turning into dolls marching down the boulevard.
Paprika is a stunning work of animation. It moves fluidly between dreams and reality even before they start to merge, and it freely breaks our own understanding of what on screen is "real". Satoshi Kon was a rare talent, and exulted in all of the impossibility the medium allows. It's not that no animator had ever morphed one form into another or broken the rules of physics, but the way Kon employs these tools of the medium reveals an inventiveness and whimsy that combined with this interest in the real vs. unreal made him truly unique. It's a tragedy he was taken from us so young with so much potential, but at least in Paprika he was able to deliver a work that both summed up and celebrated his career, and one that any director would be proud of.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 11/30: Hugo
THANKSGIVING WEEK!
Our next Movie of the Week is Martin Scorsese's love letter to cinema and in particular the visionary works of Georges Méliès. Join us next week for our discussion of Hugo, available on Netflix and for rent from the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 11/24: The Nest
A pairing on tense family situations concludes with Sean Dorkin's new film The Nest, starring Dissolve favorites Jude Law and Carrie Coon. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of The Nest, available for rent on Amazon Video.
ANIMATION WEEK!
"What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." - Morpheus
One motif that is present in almost all of Satoshi Kon's work is the blurring of reality and unreality. He loved to explore that liminal space where fact and fancy meet and become one. In Hitchcockian thriller Perfect Blue a woman's grasp on reality slowly disintegrates amidst fears of a stalker and plots against her career. Millenium Actress sees a television crew drop into and out of the memories of the aging actress they're interviewing. And Kon's series Paranoia Agent deals with a shared public delusion of a violent criminal.
Paprika was Kon's final feature film and the one where this motif most fully became theme. The primary conceit of the film is a device called the DC Mini which lets people view and even enter the dreams of others. It was developed as a tool for use with psychiatric patients, but one has been stolen and the researchers are trying to track it down.
We get to see how the device is put to both good and nefarious purposes. Paprika, the alter-ego of Dr. Atsuko Chiba (Hayashibara Megumi), has been using it without authorization to provide psychiatric treatment to people outside of the company, including Detective Toshimi Konakawa (Ōtsuka Akio). But the devices do not have access controls, allowing anyone to enter another's dreams and corrupt their perceptions of reality, warping their minds with a dream of a parade that can only be described as viral. Ultimately the dreams and reality begin to merge, threatening a cataclysm.
The film explores how technology creates a shared subconcious, and the ways that subconscious can manifest itself in the world. The famous parade sequence at the climax shows the dream world merging with reality in a literal sense, but we also see how Konakawa has become the detective he was playing in the film short he was making as a teenager. "Truth has the structure of a fiction" says the mystery man from Konakawa's dream, and our world is full of examples of stories becoming truth both for good or ill. Just, usually they don't include people literally turning into dolls marching down the boulevard.
Paprika is a stunning work of animation. It moves fluidly between dreams and reality even before they start to merge, and it freely breaks our own understanding of what on screen is "real". Satoshi Kon was a rare talent, and exulted in all of the impossibility the medium allows. It's not that no animator had ever morphed one form into another or broken the rules of physics, but the way Kon employs these tools of the medium reveals an inventiveness and whimsy that combined with this interest in the real vs. unreal made him truly unique. It's a tragedy he was taken from us so young with so much potential, but at least in Paprika he was able to deliver a work that both summed up and celebrated his career, and one that any director would be proud of.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 11/30: Hugo
THANKSGIVING WEEK!
Our next Movie of the Week is Martin Scorsese's love letter to cinema and in particular the visionary works of Georges Méliès. Join us next week for our discussion of Hugo, available on Netflix and for rent from the usual places.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 11/24: The Nest
A pairing on tense family situations concludes with Sean Dorkin's new film The Nest, starring Dissolve favorites Jude Law and Carrie Coon. Join us Wednesday for our discussion of The Nest, available for rent on Amazon Video.