From Christopher Nolan to Ono no Komachi, a number of artists have tried to tackle the theme of dreams. Nothing is more challenging than explaining a dream you had to an audience and conveying to them the same sense of terror, wonder, or enchantment that you had when your eyes were closed. Dreams are notoriously hard to explain in a way that makes sense to other people.
This is due to the fact that dreams are some of the most intimate experiences we can have; they are like little windows into our own subconscious minds that give us hints about our true selves. In a way that other, earlier dream-based works couldn’t, Lewis Carroll’s Alice learned that Wonderland and the world beyond the Looking-Glass were figments of her imagination. This literary revolution occurred in 1864, and while it wasn’t explicitly mentioned in Satoshi Kon’s 2006 film Paprika, it’s difficult not to notice hints of Alice’s world in Kon’s dreamscapes.
Paprika isn’t a particularly innovative plot, but its storytelling technique might be. It investigates the limits between the conscious and subconscious realms, utilizing technology to gain access to the subconscious so that therapists can assist their patients in managing their trauma.
Kon is not unfamiliar with this concept: Magnetic Rose pays ominous homage to the way in which people might use their dreams as a means of escaping harsh reality, while Millennium Actress delves into a different interpretation of losing oneself in a dream as an actress who inhabits multiple personas. Both of those characteristics are present in Paprika; the predatory Sleeping Beauty, played by Magnetic Rose, has a fairy tale sensibility that translates into a parade of horrors; she also assumes multiple personas as she flits between dreams, like to Chiyoko from Millennium Actress. In Paprika, the concept of a dream that becomes a nightmare—a concept that characterizes Magnetic Rose—is developed into a more acute and focused form, and the idea that a dream is a condition from which one must awaken becomes crucial. A dream is supposed to be transient, like something that happens only in the mind.
It seems obvious that dreams and movies are related in Paprika. This is a frequent subject in Kon’s works, after all, and it gives Paprika some perspective, especially when it comes to the constant procession of dreams that she and Detective Konakawa encounter while traveling.
The parade is a tumultuous celebration of insanity, with dolls, fey beings, and floats moving in a semi-synchronized state of insanity until they finally transcend from dreams into reality. It’s difficult to choose just one dream to track in the parade because there is so much to take in (aided, of course, by the amazing soundtrack). It is the culmination of all dreams ever had, combined into one horrific nightmare. It’s like a movie bursting through the screen in a cinema when it transitions from the sleeping to the waking world, conveying the specific trauma Konakawa is dealing with—a friend who once had aspirations of becoming a film director.
Paprika’s central concept is the idea of forcibly fusing fantasy and reality. Kon takes that topic and continues with it in the movie. The DC Mini is the whole premise of in-world technology that lets individuals access other people’s dreams for mental therapy. When Osanai captures Paprika and peeles back her skin to expose Dr. Atsuko Chiba below, it’s one of the most beautiful sights. Even though we already know that Chiba and Paprika are the same person, it still hurts to see her ideal skin removed symbolically. It’s handled like an attack; Osanai forcesfully undresses Chiba, who screams.
Furthermore, Paprika is more than just the shape Chiba adopts for her dreamwork; he is abusing her. Paprika represents her idealized self, an unrestricted Chiba capable of anything. We may portray her as the person Chiba aspires to be, or perhaps as the genuine Chiba, behind her outward show. She is losing her armor and possibly her identity when Osanai takes away her form. In a different light, Chiba could have to accept that she is Atsuko Chiba and that Paprika is the dream when he takes away the Paprika skin.
In the end, Paprika demonstrates why dreams are so significant. Even if they are ephemeral and unreal, their worth remains unchanged. Paprika symbolizes the endless freedom of the subconscious and the part of all of us that dream when she breaks free from Chiba. Chiba no longer has to cling so fiercely to her alter ego; it’s not that she doesn’t need her dream self. Dreams must occasionally be let go.
The theater is an ideal. When Puck advises us to imagine in his last speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “That you have but slumber’d here/While these visions did appear./And this weak and idle theme,/No more yielding but a dream,” Shakespeare may have expressed it best. Paprika as a movie embodies this. For a limited period of time, it offers us a wonderful dream—and occasionally a terrifying nightmare—to enjoy. When Konakawa, at the end, is finally able to go to the movies, he is all of us pleading for a ticket to enter a dreamworld. The fact that these are the movie’s last words is not by accident; they serve as a reminder that this is a dream we can go through repeatedly. The fact that it was published almost twenty years ago is irrelevant because dreams are fleeting yet timeless. The movie takes viewers on an odd and winding trip through the concept of nightmares and dreams. Above all, Paprika serves as a crucial reminder that dreams—regardless of the bizarre nightmare parades they may contain—are real and significant.
