"Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things."
Though on its face this may seem an almost childish idea to most, if you have ever experienced a lucid dream, or if you really pay any attention at all to your inner life, you may come to realize that there is truth to it. What is more, there is a real terror that can accompany realizing that the ground we stand on, at least figuratively speaking, is not solid. All experience is simply experience, whether it involves balancing your checkbook or talking to the monk levitating above a colossal, marching procession of cymbal-crashing frog men.
Many movies have dealt with this idea. (The Science of Sleep and Vanilla Sky are the first two that come to mind that do it any justice, but there are many more.) However, few have done it with such a brilliant flare for the surreal as Satoshi Kon's Paprika. Like his previous film, Perfect Blue (review here), the animation is top notch, and the script solid, though even the best animes tend to be a little stilted in translation. He also utilizes many of the same techniques in both movies, including breaking that fourth wall nearly every scene. In the case of Paprika, these techniques are being applied for a different purpose, and I would say they are done somewhat more gracefully.
However, the genius of Paprika lies in the sheer inspired weirdness that exists in the realms of consciousness between waking and deep, dreamless coma. There is a certain logic to dreams, which tends to only make sense within the context of the dream itself- while dreaming it makes perfect sense that you are talking to a fox, while underwater, that is somehow both your mother and your dead future self at the same time. Whenever we wake up and try to recount our dreams to friends, they oftentimes sound foolish for this reason. It really is true that you "had to be there." Paprika succeeds at dealing with these realms, bringing us there without it feeling too forced. (Unlike your stereotypical dream sequences where the director is like "it needs to be weird. Get a smoke machine and find us a midget!")
Though I will admit I have not (yet) read it, I would imagine much of this influence comes from Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel that the movie was based on. On the strangeness scale, between Full House and Naked Lunch, this movie is definitely a trip to Interzone.
So if "off the beaten path" is your thing, and you haven't taken the trip yet, I suggest you strap yourself in for quite a ride. Just don't be surprised if you have some really strange dreams afterwards.
--James Curcio.
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