30-minutna nadrealistična vizualna hobotnica - mačić odlazi u svijet mrtvih spasiti dušu svoje sestre. Slijedi žestoko-lirično ludilo.
When a young kitten's soul is stolen by Death, she and her brother set out for a strange land on a mission to recover the plundered entity. All Nyaako wants is her soul back, and her loyal brother Nyatta is more than willing to help his sister in her time of need. In the surreal and unexplored landscape of the Other Side, however, nothing is what it seems and their journey soon takes an ominous twist. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Tatsuo Sato’s “Cat Soup” is an odd brew. And because it’s such a short experiment in bizarre visuals, giving this 30-minute movie a grade becomes a problem. It’s much too short to be properly judged, feeling more like a 30-minute episode of a long serial rather than the only volume of a movie. Even the ending seems to set up a sequel, although I don’t know if one is presently in the works.
Written and directed by Tatsuo Sato, the short animation concerns a boy cat (a kitty, I guess you’d call him) that goes on a quest to recover his sister’s lost soul. Or something to that affect.
The thing is, it’s mostly a crapshoot as to what the heck “Cat Soup” is actually about. And while the short offers up dialogue by way of dialogue balloons ala the pages of a comic book, unfortunately these offerings are in Japanese, and the version of the movie I saw came with no subtitles. Then again, I suppose it doesn’t really matter, because much of “Cat Soup” is meant to be visceral and instinctive, and not ponderous. It is, first and foremost, a movie built to be “read” through its visuals.
Technically speaking, “Cat Soup” uses more traditional animation than one is used to in this day and age of CGI. The quality ranges from superb cel animation to what looks like rushed hand drawings. They’re all quite spectacular, in a “am I on drugs or is it just this movie?” sort of way. Like some painting, “Cat Soup” unfolds quickly and soon the cat siblings are lost in an outlandish landscape where anything and everything can happen, and actually does.
“Cat Soup” has often been described as “Hello Kitty on acid”, and that’s a good of a description as any I’ve heard. It’s certainly not very traditional in many ways, and if one was of a mind to do so, I’m certain many of the short’s oddball situations and characters can be dissected and translated into something meaningful. At just 30 minutes, there’s not a lot here to waste, so everything that appears should be taken as being meaningful. That is, if one was so incline to read that much into a short animation about a cat boy and a cat girl.
Along the way, a God-like figure shows up to play with time. I guess we can read into this that God is mysterious, but often not in the ways we think he is. As the landscape gets flooded and iced and turned into desert and fall off cosmic edges, we can read that the world we know is nothing more than a small, insignificant cog in one of God’s many machines. And under his complete mercy, our world is to be sped up, rewind, or pause at his whim. And God’s whims, according to “Cat Soup”, are just as petty as us mere mortals. Then again, I could be completely off the mark.
Of course the above is just one flippant reading of “Cat Soup”. I’m sure those with more experience translating dreams will fare much better. After all, “Cat Soup” is really one big 30-minute trippy dream.
A word of caution, though: “Cat Soup” is not for children. While the two main cat characters are cute and cuddly, there are some bloody and very mature moments. At one point, a woman gets cut into pieces by a giant spinning blade. In general, Limbs are being lopped off on a daily basis throughout the short. The dismemberings are not too graphic as to be disgusting, but they can be a bit disturbing for younger viewers.
The cats may look darn cute, but the short is not for minors. - www.beyondhollywood.com/
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