Paprika (2006)

Paprika arrives from 2006, a Japanese animated psychological thriller directed by Satoshi Kon and adapted from Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel. A device allows therapists to walk through their patients' dreams. A prototype is stolen, and the dreams begin walking back. What follows is a procession of marching appliances, a leering doll, and a detective who keeps dreaming in movie genres. The film cares about the collapse of the boundary between cinema and consciousness. It cares about very little else.

A survey of contemporary markers yields a clean sheet. Dr. Atsuko Chiba is a capable woman who saves the world, and the film never pauses to announce this as a statement. Dr. Tokita is obese, and his weight is a character detail instead of a platform. Psychiatric patients populate the story, yet their conditions supply dream imagery, not identity advocacy. There is no climate sermon, no indictment of capital, no racial reckoning, no revision of the historical record. The villain is a paraplegic chairman who wants to shield dreams from humanity's influence. His grievance is metaphysical. The film holds no opinion about who owns the means of production.

Craft carries the remainder. Kon's editing slips between registers without warning, and the score by Susumu Hirasawa deploys a Vocaloid vocal that was a curiosity in 2006 and is now a footnote. The film premiered at Venice and was largely passed over by awards bodies that prefer their seriousness legible. It is a difficult vintage: strange, beautiful, and wholly uninterested in instructing us. Zero, then. Not for a lack of ideas. Its ideas concern perception, and perception has never required a syllabus.