We’ve all been on trips before, but a Satoshi Kon film is like LSD; it will stain the insides of your skull with a very intriguing graffiti.  Having partaken of Kon’s latest masterpiece to hit our shores, all I can think to say is…wow.

Paprika is a strange, mind-bending film that grips both halves of your brain and starts twisting like a Rubik’s cube.  Watching this film is like standing on stage at a ballet, jumping into a mosh pit at a thrash metal concert and running a 10K.  And that’s before the opening credits are even rolling! 

The animation has a fluidity to it that is unrivaled in recent releases.  The amount of movement in Paprika is incredible for the medium.  I can’t help but wonder how many nights the team at Madhouse fell asleep at their desks while creating this.

Story wise this is a sci-fi movie with the barest trace elements of sci-fi just to have some touch of reality to stand on, that is until reality becomes corrupted and you have no idea what’s real anymore.  A still experimental device capable of recording people’s dreams falls into the hands of somebody with a very bleak, disdainful outlook on the world.  Oh yeah, no good at all could come from that.  And it doesn’t take long because pretty soon the collected dreams are merging into one Macy’s Turkey Day Parade from hell.  And things still get worse from there.

The title character Paprika, oddly enough, is not real either.  She’s actually the rogue personality of a walking cold shoulder therapist; picture Motoko Kusanagi’s “Chroma” with Ed from Bebop for an alter ego.

Over the course of the film you’re constantly being pulled in another direction, making it confusing to know for sure if you’re in a dream or in the real world.  But here’s the kicker; that was the idea! 

I’ll definitely have to watch this one several—make that a few hundred--times before I fully realize what I’m seeing.  It’s more than the theme of how technology and those foolish enough to abuse it can go too far.  It’s more than a battle of minds in a dreamscape becoming more real.  It’s more than wow. 

To call Paprika an instant classic sounds appropriate.  It’s a dangerous thing to underestimate Satoshi Kon.  When jis mind shifts into high gear your mind becomes that cube.

And it will be twisted every which way.

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