Inception vs. Paprika controversy , 開始対パプリカ論争

9. Paprika Se Dreamscape già proponeva un uomo che entra nei sogni degli altri nel 1984, nel 2006 Paprika (del da poco scomparso Satoshi Kon) è invece proprio un viaggio nel subconscio umano attraverso i sogni in tutto e per tutto identico, nei presupposti e non nelle finalità, a quello di Inception. Sebbene l'idea di Satoshi Kon fosse di creare un'opera immaginifica, incontrollata e delirante (tutto il contrario del rigore e del controllo massimo di Nolan), lo stesso i fan di Paprika (presente!) hanno gridato nella sala buia non appena è stato chiaro quel che faceva Di Caprio.

Christopher Nolan's dream-within-a-dream saga 'Inception' has endured its fair share of criticism since the movie's release this summer. While many have hailed the film as a visual masterpiece and a true original, others have noted similarities between 'Inception' and a handful of other films like 1984's 'Dreamscape' and the 2006 anime 'Paprika.' Now, [Blues Brothers] director John Landis is adding his vote to the "not original" category by stating that he doesn't think Nolan's latest is anything new.

Landis had this to say about the film: "Interestingly enough 'Inception,' which is wonderful, is not original. There have been a lot of movies like it; remember 'Dreamscape?' Oh that's bad special effects but almost the same movie. It's Dennis Quaid and Edward Albert is the president of the United States and they insert him into his dreams." Do we remember 'Dreamscape,' Landis? Of course we do -- the snake-man was terrifying to young eyes.

Owning the Dream: See “Paprika,” Not “Inception”
Jonathan Stromberg | Sep 27, 2010 | Comments 0


“Owning the Dream” is a part of a series titled “This & That” where contributors compare films that range from being obviously the same, i.e. remakes, to films that share enough similarities that a comparison is inevitable.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Kon Satoshi’s “Paprika” (2006) to Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” (2010). There is at least some indication that Nolan has seen and was inspired by “Paprika,” though it is hard to say for sure. One could argue Nolan couldn’t be called a responsible filmmaker without seeing such a similar work by a contemporary, especially one that had been so well regarded critically around the world—in fact, the film which elevated Kon into the pantheon to respected auteurs and earned him a career retrospective, after only a decade as a director, at Lincoln Center. Perhaps that as well, would be too harsh a criticism. Many fans of Kon’s work will complain that “Inception” lifts the premise of “Paprika” without acknowledging it and at the same time spoiling it. Fans of Nolan, on the other hand, will argue that “Inception” owes nothing to anyone, that it and “Paprika” couldn’t be any more dissimilar, and that it is itself a masterwork worthy of accolades.

I’ll leave the Nolanites to their sad indignity. To be generous, Nolan’s crime may not be making a bad movie (though I believe he did) so much as failing to make a good movie—at least, one as good as Kon’s. In light of Kon’s recent and tragic death, it is appropriate to highlight his best work, and best qualities, in contrast to such a woefully inadequate competitor.

Both films return to the essential analogy of the cinema as shared dream, with the filmmaker situated as the original, lucid dreamer. This idea, elements of it explored by Jean-Louis Baudry (“The Apparatus,” 1975) and others both before and after, going back at least to Jean Cocteau’s early psychodrama “Le Sang d’un Poète” (1930) and Maya Deren’s seminal works “Meshes of the Afternoon” (1943) and “At Land”(1944), is well trod material. By introducing the science fiction element of a device through which characters may invade each other’s dreams, these films become meta-fiction. They comment not only on their internal dramas, but also on the medium itself. In doing so, they say quite a bit more about filmmaking than about dreaming, and this is one of the areas in which Kon and Nolan diverge.

To dream in Nolan’s imagination means to be enslaved by it. Agents in a shared dream may engage it, in a limited way, but they can neither change it nor challenge the original dream’s architect (who, apparently, is typically absent). Most powerless of all is the dreamer herself, who is the only participant who lacks lucidity. Whether it’s appropriate to take these roles to be analogues to the world of cinema—architect as director, agents as actors, dreamer as audience—is debatable, though this certainly seems to be the intention. After all, why, given the long and established history of the film as dream paradigm, would you ignore such an obvious parallel? And if that was Nolan’s intent, rather than just a slip on his part, what does it say about his opinion of the audience? We appear to be fodder for deception, lured in by brain-bandits trying to tear something precious out of us. And behind it all, the mastermind, in total control, but strangely not implicated in the crime itself—floating above and outside it. The architect has to create a minutely detailed world, and specifically circumscribe the roles of the agents he will insert, so that when he turns them loose upon the dreamer there is only one possible conclusion. In short, the goal of the skilled architect, and the filmmaker, is absolute control. What Nolan renders to us is a totalitarian vision in which he is the invisible dictator. He so generously grants us a dream in which rigid rules and hierarchies, explained to the audience in insufferable exposition, keep us from dreaming at all. The only dreamlike thing about his vision are the characters, who are so improbable and contradictory that even the much derogated audience can tell they could never exist in reality.

Watching “Paprika” gives a completely different experience. One would think animation would be just as megalomaniacal, but it’s clear this isn’t the case at all. Perhaps the reality is that control isn’t the issue at all, but rather the lust for it. Nolan has relatively little control over his film, or the audience’s reaction to it, despite his insistence. Kon on the other hand, who can manipulate almost every aspect of his production as a matter of practice, has no need for oppression. Paprika is a deeply charitable film, which rather than forcing itself upon the audience, approaches bearing gifts. Kon’s avatar in the film, Dr. Tokita, lets slip this beautifully concise statement on the role of filmmaker-as-dreamer, aptly while daydreaming himself:

“Isn’t it wonderful? The ability to see a friend’s dream as if it were your own. To share the same dream.”

This is what Kon wants—to share his dream with you as if it were your own. “Paprika” makes no attempt to force you to succumb to it. In fact, that is what the narrative of the film rails against. Drs. Tokita and Atsuko, and the film’s eponymous protagonist, are racing to defeat a cruel, nihilistic dream infecting Tokyo. The dream is controlled by an aging authoritarian who yearns to be young again and to remake the world in his image—perhaps much as Nolan’s Dom Cobb created his fantasy world with it’s endless expanse of stark gray modernity for him to share alone with a woman he would come to loathe. But this sort of idea isn’t truly a dream, or even a nightmare. It’s a sadistic fantasy. The dreamer in this case feels nothing at all for the innocent people whose psyches this dream devours. Kon, the dreamer behind the dream, however, loves the audience as much as the film. This is intrinsic to the idea of sharing a dream. Where Nolan wants to force you to watch his vision, which can never be your own, Kon wants to share his. He wants his imagery to belong to the audience, and to be loved by the audience. He wants this, simply, because his images, even when dark, are joyful. He wants to share them because they bring him joy to create, and that feeling is transmitted directly through the medium. “Inception,” on the other hand, is one of the least joyous experiences one can have in a theater. This isn’t a failure on the part of the film, which is by any account skillfully crafted, but rather a failure of Nolan’s own imagination—a failure to imagine the audience as peers.

Kon describes his creative process, roughly translated, as “hoodlum emulation.” By which he means that there are two competing desires within him: the low-class hoodlum, who wants to force his visions upon the audience, and the sophisticated artist who respects his viewers’ intellects. He allows the hoodlum to run within the artist, under it’s control, so that when he forces too much, it can be shut down and brought back under the reins of subtlety and art. His conscious control over his creative impulse, operating within a sandbox, is well described by technological terms. The result is a film which caries a great amount of force and yet never bullies. The contrast I intend to draw to “Inception” in this regard should be clear. Nolan would do well to contain his inner hoodlum, which has pretensions to Al Capone.

When taken in comparison, the contest between “Paprika” and “Inception” can be decided simply by addressing the context of the films within the careers of the filmmakers. “Paprika” the film, is a loose adaptation of “Paprika,” the novel, by the celebrated avant-garde science fiction writer Yasutaka Tsutsui. Each work can now be seen as the climax of its creator’s career. Tsutsui published his novel as a serial in 1993 before announcing his retirement from writing (which he has since returned to), and now considers it his most entertaining work, and his best attempt at fusing meta-fiction and psychoanalysis. Kon’s film stands as his last completed film, though “Dream Machines,” which is still in production, is destined to be his capstone. “Paprika” is his magnum opus. Just as his masterpiece “Perfect Blue” (1998) established him as a respected animator, “Paprika” has become his most important work as an auteur. It is his final artistic statement, an implicit declaration of the meaning and purpose of filmmaking in his view. Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, on the other hand, will likely remain “The Dark Knight (2008),” which is a genre defining, if somewhat inconsistent, film. Its flaws reflect Nolan’s, in that it becomes self-indulgent and pedantic in its third hour, but it makes up for these by harnessing—and serving—the collective energy of the millions of Batman fans who would see it. It’s as near perfect a realist superhero movie as has yet been made, and though it begs to be further refined it will always be respected as such. “Inception,” on the other hand, was Nolan’s victory lap. Like Peter Jackson, who squandered his credibility windfall on “King Kong (2005),” Nolan was essentially given $160 Million to make whatever film he wanted. The film he wanted to make was “Inception.” That itself says everything that needs to be said about him as a filmmaker. Theses could be written about the crucible directors face when rewarded for their commercial success by creative independence and why some succeed—Kubrick, Coppola, Raimi—and some—Cameron, Jackson, Nolan—fail? Kon Satoshi made Paprika on a budget of around $3 Million. That’s less than 2% what Warner Brothers jettisoned on “Inception.” For all that investment, what did they get but proof that Christopher Nolan’s level of taste is seriously questionable?

As I acknowledged earlier, it may be unfair to pit against each other two distinct films by very different filmmakers. And perhaps it is also unfair to criticize Nolan so harshly for failing to live up to the artistic standard set by someone else. Certainly one should never be in the position of having to choose between only ever seeing one movie and not another. And it’s true that “Paprika” is an occasionally uneven film, though still excellent. And it’s also true that “Inception” is superbly made, despite its lame script inability to adapt to its cast. When a great filmmaker passes, though, who will remember him? What is his legacy, and what is his estate? Kon Satoshi worked with a small but extremely talented crew, and inherited the resources of Japan’s most significant animation studio—besides maybe Ghibli. But his work has always been of limited popular interest. He and his crew had to work every day making excellent films for their own livelihood. Kon died with a prolific though short résumé of only 5 feature films and a television series. Each was better than the last. Nolan earns his criticism, because, frankly, he can afford it. Nolan is sold as the new model for the Hollywood auteur, the kind who earns his artistic license by grossing a billion dollars from a single film. He will have to suffer a much more miserable flop than “Inception” (which has been significantly profitable) for him to worry about his next job. Critics across the board lauded “Inception” as the “the kind of film Hollywood should be making.” By this they mean Hollywood should hand back creative control to directors, which any lover of cinema can probably agree. But not just any director should be able to make whatever they want, and not just because they’ve brought home the bank. Profitability is no surrogate for integrity. And any artist who lacks integrity, due either to delusion or to ignorance, gets exactly what they deserve from the haters.

I have a theory—and it’s just a theory, so please do argue against it—that mainstream viewers don’t want to see unrecognizable universes. They want sci-fi and fantasy, sure, but they’re more inclined to watch something in which the unknown enters the known world. Robots and aliens among us, not humans on other worlds and in strange and distant futures. Even with “The Matrix,” to which “Scott Pilgrim” has been likened, the fantasy world was in context the world we’re familiar with, and Neo was an outsider who’d come to it/us from the unfamiliar “real” space. Surely most of the fans of that film prefer the scenes in which a super-powered Keanu Reeves is doing magical things in “our” universe, even if it’s a false one, rather than the scenes outside the Matrix in that dark, dystopic “reality.”

The same can be argued for why “Inception” was more popular. One of my main issues with that movie is that it isn’t surreal enough, but for the majority of moviegoers this was likely a popular factor. The dream worlds in “Inception” looked like our real world for the most part, and fantasy occurred in this “realistic” space instead of there being “realistic” people in a fantasy space. Had “Inception” really been like the comparable anime film “Paprika,” with its spectacularly bizarre dreamscapes, I don’t think it would have fared so well.

I posted earlier about the late Satoshi Kon, whose animated film Paprika bears a marked resemblance to Inception. Since then, others have noticed the same thing. The big difference is that Paprika has the real world in danger of being overrun by the dream world. If you’re interested in something similar, check this Japanese film out on DVD and remember a director taken from us too soon.

...EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION! RUSH IT OUT A-S-A-P!

For a movie acting like it's intelligent, it sure talks down to the audience. As stated before, nothing is left to the imagination. Much superior dream-related films like Total Recall (1990) and Paprika (2006) establish their own rules about dreams and create dreamworlds that require one or two little bits of exposition and after that, you fully understand their workings and can enjoy the rest of the films without further explanation. However, the dreamworld in Inception was way over-developed since there's too much to the structure as to where it requires constant explanation. This is a clear case of too much complexity killing a potentially good idea. Some might defend the heavy dialogue, stating that the explanations give people a full understanding of the universe Nolan created. However, it doesn't work with me because when I watch a movie, I care about character development and exploration of certain ideas, I could care less about every tiny detail in a certain universe since I only want enough information as to where I can follow it.

LACK OF ORIGINALITY

Lots of people are hailing this as very creative and original. I can't disagree more with this notion because this feels like a stale copy of Paprika. Paprika focused on psychotherapists diving into the dreams of their patients to understand the subconscious better and to get information important to them (such as the theft of their technological breakthrough, the DC Mini). Inception focuses on people diving into peoples' dreams so they can steal or plant ideas. While Paprika had better visuals and characters to go with its dreamworlds, Inception opts for very conventional imagery and bland characters, thinking that the "amazing" multi-layered dreamworld is enough to hold the movie together....

...PRETENDING TO BE "SMART"

It looks like Nolan made some quick searches on Wikipedia to shoe-horn in some "smart" ideas into the film. The best example of this would be when Arthur explains to Ariadne the concept of the Penrose Stairs and explains how it's an infinite loop, and how it's that concept that's used to confuse inception victims, then the camera moves down to show that it's a regular staircase. Wow, wasn't that genius?!! The other part that pretends to be "smart" is the plotting. Again, Total Recall and Paprika successfully merged fantasy and reality and really twisted the audience's minds questioning what's happening is real or not. With Inception, however, it's quite easy to follow the dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams because they're neatly separated from each other, you just have to keep track of them (I guess Nolan thinks we're too stupid to do that). The last quarter or so of the movie gets extra convoluted with quick cuts between the multi-layered dreams and Cobb facing Mal in others. I guess this was supposed to make the movie puzzle-like and give the audience something to solve....

...FINAL WORD

At the end of the day, Inception is just another "style over substance" over-priced summer cash-in (much like Nolan's previous movie, The Dark Knight), but unlike most others of its ilk, it really hurts itself by pretending to look like a thinking-man's film. At least the recent Transformers movies are honest with being loud special effects vehicles and the fans will agree with that notion. I'll give Inception some more points than that blue abomination Avatar since it felt a little more ambitious than that blue liberal propaganda piece, but it's still quite a wretched picture. If you want some great and truly thought-provoking sci-fi, go read the Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick and go watch Paprika (2006), Total Recall (1990), Solaris (1972), and Stalker (1979). or the matrix. so if you are into these kind of films than i guess you really had a great time watching it. i truly feel that nolans early work was so much better than what he is making now. memento, batman begins, following and insomnia are classic movies that i am think nolan should of won oscars but never got the chance.

Dir. Satoshi Kon (2006). Anticipating Inception, Paprika was the late cyberpunk animation director’s last and most complicated anime.

DEADLINE: While you were waiting for that solution, were there movies that came along that convinced you the technology was there to translate your visuals to the screen?
NOLAN: On The Dark Knight we really tried to push ourselves to achieve a lot of large-scale effects in camera, to really create a world by shooting on location, all around the world, and by doing very large in-camera gags like flipping an 18-wheeler truck on a busy downtown street, for real. Coming out the other side of that experience and having enjoyed it as much as I did left me feeling like we had a great team of people who could devise and photograph these kinds of visuals. I came away feeling well equipped to take on the world of Inception and the kind of outlandish imagery it would require. Most of the technology employed for the imagery of Inception is fairly old-fashioned. There is some newer technology that the guys at Double Negative brought to the table. The most daunting aspect of the visuals, for me, had always been things that had been based on in-camera technologies, like achieving zero gravity by building sets with different orientations and doing tricks with wires. Those techniques were based on seeing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 when I was a kid, falling in love with deception and the magical tricks he did to convince an audience there was zero gravity. The thing that really gave me confidence to take on my film had more to do with my own experience, rather than technology in other people’s films. It was more about having had the opportunity to do some really large-scale filmmaking and getting comfortable with the big machine that’s involved in that to really get a handle on pushing the envelope with what we’d be able to do on set and in-camera.

DEADLINE: Inception was lauded in Hollywood as a dose of originality in a summer largely devoid of it. Studios rely on tentpoles, but are they concerned enough about originality?
NOLAN: I’m not sure I’d put that down to studio reliance on tent poles. Maybe it’s just particularly working with Warners Bros, but in my experience with the studio system, they have always understood the need for freshness and not just something the audience has seen before. I’m not sure I’d pin it down necessarily to studio reliance on tent poles, because I think it’s as possible to make over-familiar small movies as it is to make over-familiar tent poles. In fact, the honest truth is that when you look at some of the more original successes over time, conceptually a lot of them are tent poles, from Star Wars to Avatar.

Let us begin with the primary claim—Inception stole the idea of a dream machine from Paprika. It is nearly impossible to deny the similarities between the two films on this account. The dream machine is meant to provide access into ones subconscious; it is the tool that allows both plots to flourish, but once that tool has been used, it takes the plots in different directions.

why did satoshi kon have to die?? Now we're stuck with Chrisopher Nolan and his overrated body of work.

...The basic premise of entering someone's dream world was superbly handled in the Japanese anime "Paprika," which served up a bizarre and surreal world with less explicit plot exposition. But both films use the dream worlds to create tense thrillers. In "Paprika," the main character was like a detective who entered a person's dream to try and resolve emotional traumas. In "Inception," it's something of a crime thriller as the character enter a man's dreams to plant an idea that will alter his business strategy....

...ACCOMANDO: But you could do the same thing without constantly bogging it down in exposition like that. I mean, there’s an animated film “Paprika” that is a similar sort of concept where it’s…

MARKS: Very good, yeah…

ACCOMANDO: …a dream.

MARKS: No, you’re right. I like that movie.

ACCOMANDO: It’s a woman who goes into dreams. She’s like a dream therapist…

MARKS: Umm-hmm.

ACCOMANDO: …where she goes into dreams to try and help people solve their, you know, emotional and mental issues. But from what I – I mean, I haven’t seen the film recently but I don’t remember there being so much discussion of what’s going on. You get thrown into it and you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t know why kind of the parameters of the real world aren’t functioning for you but you find out as you continue on in the story. And I would’ve preferred to let some of this stuff happen and be more confused or misled or whatever without having everything just kind of grind to a halt for discussion.

WRIGHT: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t have a problem with it. I really – Honestly, I like the way they set up these very specific rules for how things are supposed to work and then they go ahead and break them sometimes, and sometimes they all sort of tie together. I mean, it’s – to me, it’s – I also love the fact that it is complex but it’s not complicated. You can follow along. You can…

CAVANAUGH: I – That’s what I was going to ask. Scott, is this the type of a movie that when you leave you’re pretty clear on what happened? Or do you still have questions?

MARKS: Absolutely not. I don’t know – I don’t – When you say that this film is not complicated, you talk about a guy who is purposely trying to convolute meaning and to obscure meaning, it’s Christopher Nolan....