What stroke me about Satoshi Kon’s Paprika, wasn’t the freudian psychoanalysis side (pointless), but the way it took us for an amazing and colorful trip into (human’s?) imagination.
IMAGINATION is oftenly described as something unreal. In the audience’s minds, there’s a clear difference between reality & imagination. And what makes interesting a film like Paprika is how it brings us to reconsider this limit. Without (really) working on an intellectual or emotional perspective.
COLORS & DYNAMIC. These 2 things define the trip experiment. ‘Talking’ directly to senses — you’ll notice during several scenes, there’s so much colors & things to watch we can lost tracks. Nothing left to rely on but one’s senses? Strangely enough, these things have influenced many films, including Speed Racer.
Can an audience refuse to play this game? Absolutely. Even tough the work is amazingly done, an audience still have a choice. For example, refusing the trip because it makes no sense, doesn’t it?
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Here’s a review I wrote when it played at the San Francisco International Film Festival:
http://www.asianreporter.com/film/2007/24-07paprika.htm