Paprika (2006 film)

Paprika premiered on 2 September 2006, at the 63rd Venice Film Festival.[6][7] It screened at the 44th New York Film Festival, playing on 7 October 2006. It competed at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival 21–29 October 2006, as the opening screening for the 2006 TIFF Animation CG Festival.[8] It also competed in 27th Fantasporto from 23 February to 3 March 2007. Paprika was shown at the 2007 National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., as the closing film of the Anime Marathon at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian, and at the 2007 Greater Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival. It played at the Sarasota Film Festival on 21 April 2007, in Sarasota, Florida. Additionally, it was shown at the 39th International Film Festival in Auckland, New Zealand, on 22 July 2007, and was shown as the festival travelled around New Zealand.

In the United States, the film received a limited release in 2007, with Sony Pictures distributing the film. It grossed $882,267 in the United States. In other territories, the film grossed $62,648 in Singapore, Italy and South Korea as of 2007, for an overseas total of $944,915 outside of Japan.[9]

Paprika has received positive reviews from film critics. It holds an 84% "Certified Fresh" approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 90 reviews, with an average rating of 7.29/10 and the consensus reading, "Following its own brand of logic, Paprika is an eye-opening mind trip that is difficult to follow but never fails to dazzle."[10] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, rated the film 81 out of 100 based on 26 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[11] Paprika won the Best Feature Length Theatrical Anime Award at the sixth-annual Tokyo Anime Awards during the 2007 Tokyo International Anime Fair.[12]

Andrez Bergen of Yomiuri Shimbun praised the Paprika as the "most mesmerizing animation long-player since Miyazaki's Spirited Away five years ago" (in 2001). He also praised the film's animation and backgrounds.[13] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle gave it a positive review, saying that the film is a "sophisticated work of the imagination" and "challenging and disturbing and uncanny in the ways it captures the nature of dreams". LaSalle later went on to say that the film is a "unique and superior achievement."[14] Rob Nelson of The Village Voice praised the film for its visuals. However, he complained about the plot, saying that Paprika is not "a movie that's meant to be understood so much as simply experienced - or maybe dreamed." Nelson later went on to say that Kon "maintains a charming faith in cinema's ability to seduce fearless new (theater) audiences, even one viewer at a time."[15] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said that the film has a "sense of unease about the rapidly changing relationship between our physical selves and our machines." Dargis praised Kon for his direction, saying that he "shows us the dark side of the imaginative world in Paprika that he himself has perceptively brightened."[16] Helen McCarthy in 500 Essential Anime Movies said that Paprika "proves once again that the great science fiction doesn't rely on giant robots and alien worlds".[17]

Conversely, Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel gave a negative review, saying "With a conventional invade-dreams/bend-reality plot, it's a bit of a bore. It's not as dreamlike and mesmerizing as Richard Linklater's rotoscope-animation Waking Life, less fanciful than the Oscar-winning anime Spirited Away."[18] Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle said the film "is as trippy as a Jefferson Airplane light show" and criticized the characters and the dialogue.[19]

The Lord of the Rings actor Elijah Wood praised Paprika in an interview, stating, "That movie blew my mind, too. That also pushed the envelope of what animation is, and it was kind of almost like a total mind-head trip, that film, from a visual stand point."[20] Time magazine included it in its top 25 animated films of all time,[21] while Time Out also included the film in its list of top 50 animated films of all time.[22] Rotten Tomatoes included it in its list of fifty best animated films of all time.[23] Newsweek Japan included Paprika in its list of the 100 best films of all time, while the American edition of Newsweek included it among its top twenty films of 2007.[24] Metacritic has listed the film among the top 25 highest-rated science fiction films of all time,[25] and the top 30 highest-rated animations of all time.[26]

Paprika received the following awards and nominations:[27]

A live-action adaptation of Paprika, to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen, was in development in 2009.[28][29] However, since then, there has not been any significant update to whether it will be produced.

Several critics and scholars have noted many striking similarities that later appeared in the 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception, including plot similarities, similar scenes, and similar characters, arguing that Inception was influenced by Paprika.[30][31][32][33] Ciara Wardlow of Film School Rejects argues that Inception was influenced by Paprika based on similarities too numerous to be coincidence, from "the focus on dream sharing technology to Ariadne’s wardrobe to references to Greek mythology, physics-defying hallways, significant dream-elevators, and the choice of having a Japanese businessman (Saito) be the one to hire Cobb and the dream team, among other things".[31] Patrick Drazen said at least "one scene is a clean and undeniable link: in the climactic dream sequence, when Paprika is trying to escape the chairman and his helper, she defies gravity by running across the wall instead of the floor."[30] Julian Rizzo-Smith of IGN claims that "Nolan drew upon famous scenery of Paprika", noting striking similarities such as "the ever-stretching long hallway where Toshimi witnesses a murder, and the visual effect of the dream world shattering like glass."[32] Joshua Horner of WhatCulture claims that "Nolan was inspired by Paprika" and adds that there are strikingly similar scenes where Paprika and Ariadne both "enter an elevator with each floor representing another layer of the host's subconscious."[33]

Alistair Swale, while uncertain whether Nolan "appropriated elements of Paprika directly," notes striking similarities between them, such as both exploring similar themes of "computer technology enabling people to enter the realm of the subconscious and experience time on multiple levels", and notes their similarities are comparable to that which exists between Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix.[34] Steven Boone of Politico said he suspects Paprika "was on Nolan's list of homages" and compares it favourably with Inception, arguing that "Kon confronts his tormented society with visual poetry, not just a remix of tropes and set pieces" and that Paprika "goes deep, where Inception just talks of depth and darkness but, as a screen experience, sticks with glib pyrotechnics".[35][36] French film site Excessif claimed in 2010 that Nolan cited Paprika as an influence on Elliot Page's character Ariadne in the film,[37][38] a claim repeated by Phil de Semlyen of Empire,[39] but Film School Rejects and Anime News Network note that no direct quote from Nolan was given to support this claim.[31][38]