The people of daytime are not allowed.

Wound up re-watching Paprika tonight, which was not my intention, but holy hell, how much do I love this movie?

This is the movie that got me interested in Jung in the first place. I didn't even know Jung existed before my s.o. said, after we saw this film, "Holy shit, Jung was all over that thing" and I was like *SALAD?FACE* and as he gave me a brief crash course in Jungian psychoanalysis I was like OMG must know more! Because this movie was just so intriguing and interesting to me and I wanted to understand it (and also because I'm kind of a big whore for Satoshi Kon, /totally unrelated). Tonight, however, was my first opportunity to actually see it again since that day we walked out of the theater.

While my knowledge of Jung is still woefully limited, even the little more I know now resulted in an experience that was more rewarding than when I first saw it. I actually think not having seen it for so long enhanced the experience - so much more of it was like this wonderful, happy surprise. I can't wait to delve more into my Jung books and come back to this again... possibly in another (almost) five years, ha.

Inevitably these days, when the topic of dreams come up (and particularly in film), I can't help but make intense faces of >8C at how much Inception pales in comparison. (This is not to say anything against anyone who enjoyed the film, or likes Nolan's work - that film and its director just personally do nothing for me. Though I do appreciate him for all the suit!porn. I think I spent more time staring at dudes' ties in that movie than I spent staring at dudes. You know not the bounds of my love for paisley.)

I have to reconcile myself with the fact that ultimately, Inception isn't a movie about dreams - it simply utilizes dreams as a gimmick to present a caper flick. Well, maybe a nicer term would be backdrop. I like stories with layers - not "literal" layers, which is maybe what Nolan felt was necessary to make his film appeal to a more mainstream audience's thinking side, but layers with genuine depth and meaning and symbols. The first chapter of Man and His Symbols is all about symbols, which is resplendent in Paprika (and even Sucker Punch, for God's sake) and near-absent in Inception, certainly by comparison. That train scene in Inception? Yeah, I wanted about eleventy billion more of those types of scenes in that movie. For a movie that's supposedly about dreams, there was so little that resembled the actual dream state in that film.

tl;dr - I expect movies about dreams to actually utilize dreams. The unconscious mind is immense in comparison to our conscious mind, limitless in scope and beyond logical comprehension. "The people of daytime are not allowed."

Also, I highly, highly recommend Paprika, and if you have even the slightest bit of knowledge about Jungian psychoanalysis, the experience will be that much more rewarding. (Not to mention much less of the movie will fly right over your head.)

This is all running through my brain lately because of a couple of stories I've been wanting to write that are more in tune with the Magical Realism genre I've loved for so much of my life as a story-swallower/wannabe-storyteller. Also, I was partly motivated to post something a little more thoughtful, since most of my recent posts have involved a lot of stupidity. Fun, yes! But I've got a balance to maintain here.

PS - I am disappointed that nobody has pointed out the not-terribly-subtle PpG quote I had in my last entry /enormous nerd how do I even go on. But perhaps everyone was too distracted on account of being mentally scarred blinded by the thought of Mojo getting a Manzilian?