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Before Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ toyed with the concept of dreams and subjective reality, the late Satoshi Kon, who passed away only a week ago, explored the very same concepts in his 2006 animated feature film Paprika. While this film’s vintage precludes calling it a classic in the traditional sense, there’s little doubt that Paprika’s fame will only grow in years to come. So in this installment of Anime Cult Classics, we pay tribute to Mr. Kon, and his magnum opus.

The world of dreams is a tenuous, fickle thing, a disjointed amalgamation of the nonsensical and fantastical. It is at once a reflection of a person’s fears, hopes and desires, and a gateway to the subconscious. The subconscious and the world of dreams play a prominent role in Paprika, with the DC Mini invention as key and centerpiece.

Doctor Atsuko Chiba is a researcher of dream therapy, and a practitioner of a radical new form of experimental psychotherapy using the DC Mini. She delves into the dreams of her patients, where through her alter ego Paprika, attempts to help them come to terms with their problems.

The serious, bespectacled Dr Atsuko Chiba and Paprika, her spunky dream counterpart

Her own problems, though, are compounded when she discovers that three of the DC Mini devices, still in their experimental stages, have been stolen from the research laboratory, allowing the thief to invade the minds of dreamers hooked up to the psychotherapy machines. The chief of the research laboratory, Dr Shima, becomes the thief’s first victim as his dreams and reality collide, causing him to spout a litany of nonsensical phrases before taking a leap of faith out of a high-rise window.

The dream parade - a nonsensical mish-mash of modern appliances and cultural icons plaguing the world of dreams

Delving into Doctor Shima’s dream, Paprika discovers the cause. Someone has caused a patient’s delusions to be lodged in Dr Shima’s mind, a someone later revealed to be co-worker Himuro, who had gone missing a few days prior. Hot on the trail of Himuro, Atsuko discovers that there is more to this act of theft and sabotage than she could possibly imagine. The lines between reality and dreams blur even further, and even fuse completely in utterly improbable ways as the film reaches its explosive climax.

Dreams and reality converge in Himuro's hideout

To simply call this film a masterpiece and leave it at that would do the late Mr. Kon no justice. He has skillfully and meticulously woven a tale that spans two realities – the waking world and the dream world – joining them together in a way that only a master of animation can.

From the onset of the film, this line is blurred. It opens with an impossible circus and a series of jump cuts through movie pastiches, with the dreamer, Detective Konakawa, waking up next to Atsuko’s dream alter ego Paprika, with physics-defying acts in an otherwise mundane setting that can only mean Atsuko is dreaming, and then it transitions to her arriving at the research lab, with her car pulling into the drive. Later, Atsuko has a narrow escape when the dream world intrudes into the real world, and she almost vaults off a balcony to her death.

At the culmination of the film, the dream world has intruded onto the real world, overlaying itself and its impossible train of nightmarish constructs onto our reality, so that both are one and the same. People join the march, becoming guitars, trumpets, girls with cellphone heads and squat television goblins, and Paprika, determined to be a figment of Atsuko’s imagination, comes to life and rescues both her and Dr Shima from a crumbling building assaulted by a giant Japanese doll.

More dream imagery - the dream parade converges on the real world, and Atsuko, naked and vulnerable in the grasp of the villain's henchman

The beauty of the dream world is a true wonder to behold. Each sequence bursts with elements of fantasy and color – dolls and wind-up toys that are cute and creepy at the same time, flowers, animals and butterflies, Dali-esque grotesquerie and melting clocks, and the organic, twisting, plant-like nature of the chief antagonist. Each scene is also laden with imagery. When the villain’s henchman has Paprika transfixed like a butterfly to a table, Paprika is ripped apart, torn open like a chrysalis to reveal the vulnerable Atsuko within. In the same way, Himuro, used and abused, is revealed to be a broken, empty husk, each cell a flaking piece of rotting honeycomb.

In true Satoshi Kon fashion, Paprika is filled with witty criticism of modern pop culture. A careful viewer will detect this thread throughout the seemingly mindless diatribe of the dream parade, which bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to TV jingles. Careful viewers might also catch bits of Mr Kon’s self-referential humor – Detective Konakawa is a failed filmmaker, whose problems stem from his own inability to advance his film career. Film making jargon is thrown into the mix, and posters of Mr Kon’s films adorn the rooftops towards the very end.

Paprika is an intellectual film – one that pushes boundaries and challenges the audience to think and look beyond the obvious. It’s also got it’s own Inception moments. So if you’ve got a taste for something of this sort, give Paprika a go. Add some extra spice to your life.