I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I remember them for just a few seconds as I’m walking downstairs in the middle of the night to use the toilet (for I am of the age where I walk downstairs in the middle of every night to use the toilet) but by the time I get there the dream has been forgotten. Like mist, it fades away no matter how hard I try to capture it.

I’m not one to put much stock into dreams and their significance. Once in a while, I’ll remember a dream and it will seem to have some deeper meaning. During my brief tenure in graduate school, I had a dream about my grandmother, some hot air balloons, and a bunch of turkeys which guided me through a major decision, but mostly I think dreams are just your brain playing Etch-A-Sketch while you’re sleeping.

Paprika is a Japanese animated film from the mind of Satoshi Kon (who also made Perfect Blue). It is a strange, beautiful film that is all about dreams, reality, and our relationship to movies and pop culture.

Taking place in the near future scientists have invented a machine that allows others to view (and even record) people’s dreams. It was built as a psychiatric tool, but it has been stolen by a terrorist. The devices, called DC-Minis, are prototypes and lack restrictions, thus anyone (including terrorists) can enter anyone else using the machine’s dreams.

Our hero is Doctor Atsuko Chiba, the head of the psychiatric department developing the DC-Minis. She’s secretly been using the machine to help people outside the purview of the research facility. When she does this she uses the alias “Paprika.”

One of the people she’s been helping is Detective Toshimi Konakawa who has been having recurring dreams about a murder case he has been unable to solve.

Together (along with Doctor Toratarō Shima the chief of staff for the institute and Doctor Kōsaku Tokita, the childlike inventor of the DC-Mini) they try to solve the mystery of who stole the device.

I think. Honestly, the plot of this film was beyond my grasp. Like a lot of films that deal with dreams, Paprika embodies dream logic to tell its story. Things are constantly changing, morphing before our eyes. Characters jump into painting and movies on a whim.

There are a lot of movie references within the film. Not to specific movies (at least none that I caught) but to genres like mysteries and romances. In doing so the film seems to be toying with the idea of reality versus fiction and how movies and books and stories sometimes seem more real than reality.

Or something. Seriously, I’m not sure what I just watched, but I sure as heck enjoyed watching. The animation is simply gorgeous. And weird. And wild. And trippy.

Go see it.