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Trailer for "Paprika"

Somewhere along the way in Satoshi Kon’s mind-bendingly phantasmal feature-length anime Paprika, a character plaintively asks, “Is this reality, or still a dream?” By this point in the film it’s a good bet that most viewers won’t be sure, either. Indeed, they may have ceased even trying to work it out, probably a wise choice.

After all, it’s not as if the movie is interested in that distinction—quite the opposite. That’s part of Kon’s point and he’s made it, sometimes brilliantly. A key element in his animated movie’s shape-changing, consciousness-challenging narrative is the implicit proposition that movies offer a viewer a dream-like mental state. This is scarcely a paradigm-shattering idea. (You thought maybe Spielberg, et al. at Dream Works were cutting a new metaphor?) But I can’t recall ever seeing it processed with such blithe cleverness.

As far as I could make out (I wouldn’t trust the word of any reviewer who claims to have completely got what’s going on without assistance), in Paprika a psychiatric research institute has come up with a “dream machine” that permits its shrinks to enter, analyze and then decommission the dreams of neurotically disabled patients. Someone makes off with the machine and super-heroine therapist Dr. Chiba sets off on a desperate quest to find it.

She’s aided by her red-headed alter ego, Paprika, who doesn’t really exist, except when she does, sort of. She’s also joined by a guilt-shadowed, movie-averse patient, a police detective who’s also investigating a murder, if it happened. (The detective’s aversion is part of both a recurring joke and the film’s resolution.)

That’s about all I’m willing to offer, summary-wise. I don’t think more would serve much purpose, anyway. Paprika isn’t really plot-bound. Kon (Perfect Blue) plays riffing games around and through his story (from a 1993 serialized novel). The movie is riddled with involuting plot shifts and surreally disconcerting imagery.

Kon’s apparitional, sometimes intricately dense frames are meant to suggest his ideas as much as the story line does. His stylistic melange combines the clean-lined, detailed presentations of architectural renderings with Japanese manga comics and old-fashioned children’s book illustrations, often all at once.

Flitting in and out is a barely noticeable and jaundiced critique of megalithic capitalist cultural production, though Kon seems only half interested in it. Anyway, for much of the movie, it’s best to just hang on for the ride, to experience it.

A media-mastering 15-year-old kid will probably get Paprika. If you have one, or can borrow one, take him or her with you and try to see it with those eyes.