The Dream Physics of Satoshi Kon's Paprika
Satoshi Kon's Paprika
is a 2-d animated film that explores the human subconsciousness and
surrealist world of dreams. One of the memorable aspects of Kon's
film is that half the film takes place in a grounded world based on
realism, and the other half takes place in a fantastical dream world.
The general gist of the film is about Dr. Atsuko Chiba and her team
of scientists. They've created a machine called the DC Mini in which
the user, in coordination with a patient, can dive into the patient's
dream and experience the exact same dream. This opens new doors to
psychological treatment as accessing the patients dream, allows the
DC Mini user to view the patients unhinged subconscious. While
treating patients in the dream world, Chiba creates an alter ego of
herself. As her real self is introverted, stern, and succinct, her
dream self named Paprika is literally a “dream girl”. She is
extroverted, a flirt, and charismatic. The project is considered a
huge leap in technology, and psychological treatment. However, at the
same time, faces termination due to the dangers of overusing the DC
Mini permanently submersing the physical state of the user into a
vegetable like state, while their subconsciousness gets to live on in
their very own dream world. The project is even later further
jeopardized, as one of the valuable and powerful DC Mini's are stolen
from the main lab.
Just like Chiba and
Paprika's personalities, the physics of the two worlds contrast and
play off each other. While in the real world physics are very
realistic and grounded, in the dream world physics are completely
thrown for a loop and anything is possible. Objects defy gravity,
time and space is distorted, and squash and stretch is exaggerated to
purposely show inconsistent mass. Inanimate objects come to life to
create a parade of colour, people's masses growing to transform, and
even “space” can be broken to connect dreams together. Kon really
pushed what can happen in the dream world, to create a breathe taking
feast for the eyes in Paprika.
In the very opening
sequence of the film Chiba and Paprika treat Detective Konakawa,
trying to find the source of his depression and anxiety. His dream
shows the key to his anxiety, which is a long hotel hallway with red
carpeting, and the corpse of a dead man floating to the ground as if
he were light as a piece of fabric.
The "fabric" like corpse in Konakawa's dream hallway.
The dead man is about 6 1/2 feet tall, and an man about that height should weigh and fall like he is about 170 pounds. To emphasis this Kon puts in the sound effects of wind, even though the corpse should have hit the ground almost immediately, and with quite an impact. Further more the rest of the physics in this sequence of the dream, besides the floating corpse, behaves realistically. Konakawa has his feet grounded from the force of gravity. Further putting emphasis and the floating corpse, Konakawa sees the faceless murderer escaping at the end of the hallway. The faceless murderer like Konakawa, is not affected by the weightlessness the corpse has. The corpse defies the natural physics of gravity that is effecting both Konakawa, and the escaping faceless murderer. Instead of hitting the ground like the 170lb corpse that he is, the corpse floats slowly in front of Konakawa taunting him with memories of the past. This is further pushed, as when Konakawa realizes what he is looking at, he goes into shock in his dream, and the floor falls away from him. He begins to plummet into the white space of his dream world, before he is awaken by a hypnic jerk.
A few minutes later in
the film, it shows Paprika exploring the city at night after leaving
Konakawa. What's interesting about this scene is that Paprika is
exploring the real world, but due to her “dream girl” status and
powers, she defies the physics of reality. As she explores the city,
she skips around playing, but when watching the scene there is a
noticeable difference in the time it takes her to hit the ground when
she is mid skip. Each skip has a wide stride, and is extended by
about two frames, a small change, but it plays a big difference.
Paprika's skips are drawn out, and it feels like even though the real
people around her are affected by the normal physics of the earth's
gravity, Paprika's animation actually makes her feel like she is
skipping on another planet with a slightly lower gravitational pull.
Note - Unfortunately this gif has actually been altered and sped up in comparison to the actual film, so Paprika feels less"floaty"
However, pay attention to the length of the distance in her last leap, as she skips off screen.
Another interesting
aspect of the dream world is that neither time or space behaves as it
normally would. Time can actually overlap itself multiple times,
creating two of the same people, at the same time in a dream. In a
later part of the film Paprika is closing in on the culprit who stole
the missing DC Mini. She dives into a colleagues dream, only to
realize that she has been tricked and the dream she is exploring is a
clone of a previous dream she has already investigated. Whats
interesting about this is that Kon shows this by literally showing
two Paprika's. Time repeats itself twice in a reoccurring dream
Paprika experiences, but on the second time around she attempts to
warn her past self of the imminent danger. Whats interesting about
the way Kon broke the physics in the dream world is that the viewer
is left in the dark, until Kon reveals that there is a second Paprika
existing in the dream.
Pinnochio Paprika attempts to warn her former self.
In the dream world, one's
physical appearance can move forward and back in time as well. When
Paprika sits down with Konakawa to discuss his anxiety disorder and
the cause, Konakawa realizes his trauma most likely happened when he
was younger. The he subconsciously realizes this, he physical form
changes into his younger self, when the incident happened. This is an
interesting use of distorting the physics of time, because instead of
distorting the time around a character, the time of the character is
what is affected.
Konakawa coversing with Paprika in his dream when he stumbles upon a clue that his anxiety is likely tied to an event in his youth.
The physics of space is
also distorted in Kon's fantastical dream world. Unlike the physical
space of the real world, where one cannot teleport or merely rip
holes into space to move about, in the dream world these are
completely possible. Paprika literally breaks space to move from one
location to another in the film. She does this in order to find the
culptrit who stole the DC Mini, with the identity of the culprit
hidden in a hole in the space of the dream. When she shatters the the
space blocking this pathway, she gains access to a passage that
connects the dreams of two different people. Spaces do not exist
seperate from each other in the dream world, and they actually end up
intertwined because of the DC Mini.
In the top frame, Paprika shatters the space of the dream, discovering a hidden pathway.
There is another example
of spaces connecting is when a dreaming Konakawa collides his dream
with the villains to rescue Paprika. During this scene the two dream
spaces, the villains' and Koakawa's, exist separately at first, with
Paprika being strangled in the dream of villain. In Konakawa's dream
he witnesses this, at first helpless, on the screen of a movie
theater. However, as he sees Paprika in danger, he literally pushes
himself against the screen of the movie theater, attempting to
connect the physical space of his dream, with the physical space of
the villain's dream. As he pushes against the wall of his dream, it
begins to stretch, and he physically rips a hole through the fabric
of space into the villains' dream rescuing Paprika.
Konakawa forces himself into the wall of his dream, to rip a path open to another dream.
This aspect becomes even
more interesting, as near the climax of the film the dream world and
real world collide, and because of this the real world becomes
distorted with dream world physics. An example of space being
distorted is Paprika using a TV in Chiba's real world to travel
quickly between two spaces. This is similar to how in the dream
world, spaces can be connected as long as there is a path that can be
found or a path that can be made.
Now with physics of the real world distorted, Paprika exists in reality, but still has dream world physics.
Finally, in the physics
of the dream world, squash and stretch, and the mass of an object is
consistently distorted. Inanimate objects come to life, and begin to
squash and stretch to give them an ability to walk. In the video
provided below, a few samples of this can be seen at 0:01, and 0:48.
It is especially prominent in objects that are perspective heavy,
like the refrigerator leading the parade. These objects squash and
squish to the point where they should technically be breaking due to
the material they are made of. In the dream world it=this can be
exaggerated to the point where even objects that are made of solid
materials such as metal, behave as if they are made of rubber.
When the dream world
collides with the real world, mass can be manipulated and pushed to
no end. At the 2:40 mark in the same video, humans transform into
guitars and gold statues, however in both transformations their
original mass is not consistent to their ending mass. In both cases
each character gains about 1/3 extra mass to fit their new form. As
unnatural as this is, simply because the dream world has collided
with the real world, these bizarre distortions are now physically
possible based on the laws of physics previously established.
Video example of exaggerated squash and stretch, and distorted mass in Paprika.
Satoshi Kon's film,
Paprika, is a beautifully animated film that really pushes
animation as a media and a form of story telling. The way he distorts
physics in the dream world he creates through gravity, distorting
space and time, and squash and stretch, is really only scratching the
surface of the film, and the dream world he created. It's amazing to
see how much thought Kon put in Paprika to
contrast the grounded real world with the dream world, and it really
shows the viewer how bizarre and broken their own dreams can be. At
the same time though, the best aspect of Kon's film is that like a
dream, when the world is as thoughtfully and exceptionally executed
as Paprika is, anything is believable to it's viewer.
