Cool for cats ?

This is an appraisal [uncorrected proof] of Kedi (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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This is an appraisal [uncorrected proof] of Kedi (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen on Monday 14 August 2017 at 8.00 p.m.

Kedi (2016) is no more about cats¹ than Visitors (2013) is about alien life per se² on Earth : likewise, Wes Anderson does not intend us to understand The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) to be telling part of the history of The Republic of Zubrowka...

What probably cannot be told, even at the time of filming [the calendar included in one shot seems to show that at least part of the shoot was in 2014], could even less so now : in the Turkey of President Erdoğan, would making this film even be allowed...?


Plus-points :

* The nauticality, the maritime nature, of Istanbul both strongly and very beautifully comes out at times, and makes one think of - and long for - Venezia !

* it is very good that at least two (human) participants are heard talking about their mental-health issues in relation to how being with and caring for cats helps them (one says what her therapist thinks, one attributes his progress, after a nervous breakdown in 2002, to looking to feeding the street cats)

* The stories about the cats – whether one or two, or in numbers that run into tens – emerge as a way of managing one’s notional world, through having an understanding of it that is rooted in telling oneself how it is, and the film’s director (Ceyda Torun) acknowledges these stories and, through editing and framing, partly gives an authority to them (saying which, takes from what are clearly different occasions³ are editorially conflated to the end of telling visually what those near to the cat(s) want (us) to believe about each one)

* Though where the film comes into its own is at the point when talk about, or reflection on, the cats of the city shades into alluding to other things – to the question for whom cities and the life within them exist, what it is to be human, and what we lose to our peril…⁴ From this perspective, some, but not very many, of the tracks used alongside the composed score (please see below) are spot on for the part of the film for which they have been selected

* Despite some reservations (please see below), there are enough moments of pure cinema to please the fussy watcher of film – plus ones of unforced smiles and laughs about what it is about cats that has some people embrace philosophies or beliefs that assert that cats know God directly, and that we, when we (respond to God and) serve their needs, are but mediators of God’s will


Negatives (these are all less important than they seem, since, on Kedi the 'Ayes' have it) :

* If you did build your entire hopes for the film on seeing the cat from the poster, it is just in one shot

* Which could also be a positive, the fact that some of the film looks – for not necessarily being the best take, but perhaps an atmospheric one – unpolished

* With the first cat featured (who, about the body, is one of the more obviously unsymmetrical ones - ginger, but with predominantly white legs (one of which has a ginger 'flash')), one is 86% certain – and would have to re-watch, when the film is on DVD, to check – that some footage has been flipped, left to right, because, one imagines, having the image that way around looked right (ginger 'flash' apart) / fitted with that segment’s dynamic better⁵

* Kira Fontana’s original score for the film [one looks in vain to IMDb (@IMDb) for much detail about the film, except the soundtrack] is sometimes too intrusive on what one is seeing (for example, the ‘shimmer’ effect of what sounds like low-reverb vibraphone over marimba), with the result of detracting from what it tries to respond to (rather than amplifying it)

* Even when Fontana brings back the principal theme in its full form (presumably, ‘Nine Lives’), which feels as though it is meant to be the final reprise that pulls out all the stops (musically, and so emotionally), there is a connected question :

Does the film do itself a disservice by seeming to build to a closing image, but then reprising the featured cats, and ending (after an unattributed short commentary by voice-over⁶) on another shot and a fade-out – as if not confident that it has established the star cats in our mind ?


Maybe some closing words here (a quotation from Russell Hoban's novel Pilgermann might be good - or from his collection The Moment Under The Moment ?)... or maybe that is it... ?


End-notes :

¹ As one might guess, 'Kedi' is Turkish for 'cat'.

² In part, Godfrey Reggio is invoking a Biblical saying (1 Chronicles 29 : 15), and alluding to its wider relevance.

³ With, for example, the cat who taps on the window of the bar / restaurant when hungry, the open or shut front door, and where the cat is tapping, give this away.

⁴ With one commentator saying that, if people have lost their relation to cats, it is for them to rediscover it (not for cats to change who they are), for it is to our detriment. Kedi unavoidably reminds of the deeper matter of such films Citizen Jane : Battle for the City (2016), The Human Scale (2012), and A Dangerous Game (2014)…

⁵ If one watches too many films (or is otherwise attuned, as to an out-of-tune string orchestra), it may also grate when the chosen aesthetics of documentary have led the cinematographer (and director) to arbitrary choices about how to shoot. Such as evoking immediacy through a very shallow depth of field and / or when the focus keeps shifting during the shot (even if either may not just actually have some viewers irresistibly hunting around the image - trying to find something in focus, and not greatly fore- or backgrounded…).

⁶ It could have been added at any time, not least because it feels more contemporary to the Turkey of now than much of the film (except the clearances of the orchards, and the similar threat to the market area) ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Courtship dance of the thumbs

This is a review of Visitors (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014
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7 April

This is a review of Visitors (2013)

Some people might define this as a non-narrative film. However, there is a narrative – only some of it is of one’s own making.

Other documentaries such as Leviathan (2012) attract praise or hatred for the same (or greater) apparent lack of narrative (one just needs to look at the reviews at IMDb to see that there is little middle ground), but they may not have had the enlivening musical style of Philip Glass behind the soundtrack* : one engages with something written by Glass largely knowing that it is by him, and, of course, director Godfrey Reggio and he have, to say the least, quite a history.

That said, this film, presented by Steven Soderbergh (who made a small appearance in the preceding film, Naqoyqatsi (2002)), names ‘dramaturgical associates’** in the closing credits, and, with a film that features both a gorilla (Triska, a female from Bronx Zoo), and, towards the end, that view of Earth as seen from The Moon, one is immediately directed to thinking of that Kubrick film – with all that the reference may, if not entail, then at least imply…

As to the title, whether we relate to The Dalai Lama, or to The Bible (Exodus 2 : 22), or just to a Green agenda, we cannot escape the impression that the images are presented in a didactic, but benign, way. (Put another way, we are being directed as to how to view the pieces of footage in relation to each other – but that still leads to a discussion-thread for Naqoyqatsi on IMDb’s page for it that is entitled Ok so how does this movie make any sense?.)

For the title Visitors cannot be said to have come from seeing the word, as shown in around the fourth shot, carved into two stones laid next to each other, with the inscription split after the third letter (VIS / ITORS) – that belief would require us to imagine that the former was inspired by seeing the latter, rather than some existing notion of temporality (or stewardship) in seeking to make the film.

However, the fact that the word does physically feature, in a work of artisanship, focuses our attention on it, and we quickly sense the knowingness behind what is presented in this film, by way of commentary on what the notion of visiting suggests : a sense of not belonging, impermanence, and maybe a consequent lack of care and commitment (versus good stewardship ?).

Compared with Samsara (2011) (which one can barely do, since it – unlike the near-contemplative Visitors – is full of motion, although at varying tempi), this film feels more like a meditation, but that directive quality leaves one less free, and there were at least two moments that induced a cringe at the apparent banality : one was a scene with a statue with a crumbling nose (the setting veered the image towards bathos, rather than pathos), the other when we are led towards light that is penetrating into a deserted factory (or warehouse).

Momentarily, the scene evoked Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup) (2003), but, as we headed towards the door (the word ‘EXIT’, as of a fire-door, above it), we were clearly going into a white-out, and there was the fear that this might rather literally have been chosen as the closing moment. (In the event, the closing moment – though trickery – was better, but still felt a little too limiting for what the film could have been and / or done with its material.)


It is very good at many things :

* Being in monochrome (or near monochrome) almost throughout

* Making a large object seem small, and also having the view invert on us, as in an optical illusion, as we move through the shot

* Seemingly by over-exposure (though it may be partly post-production effects) to darken the sky, and lighten the subject, such as the foliage and fronds of the scenes shot in Louisiana

* Allowing changes to register in their own time, be they the shift in gaze of a person as we look at his or her face, or a shadow creeping around the three faces of a building, casting the left-hand one into shadow as the right-hand one is gradually illuminated

* Combining composition and exposure in external shots so that, without the nature of what is shown necessarily being relevant to it, one was struck by the grace and beauty of the image

* Choosing faces (or groups of faces) to show, and editing them in with other footage in a way that was not predictable

* Filming things in such a way that one wondered at how it had been achieved


Not wishing to give too much else away (although it is not the sort of film where a description can elicit an impression of the visuals), there were times – when one did not know that the human subjects had been cast (though they still may not have been professionals) – when one’s musing on what was being shown led to whether it was ethical, such as the three faces in a row that looked like masks. Beautifully lit and photographed, but were we being steered to think something about these people at their (or our) expense ?

Visitors was a good watch, especially with the luxury of Screen 1 at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse), but one doubts that it would translate very well either to equipment at home, not least unless one had a very good sound system : without the impact of a large image, and hearing Glass’ score so clearly, it might as easily get lost in the noise of a house as the signal that it seeks to transmit about transition and transitoriness…



End-notes

* Instead, in Leviathan, one hears sounds that make one more and more aware that they are generated, not the recorded sound of what the footage presents, and the credits talk of sound composition, as well as of sound mixing and editing.)

** This definition is taken from Wikipedia® : If we imagine ourselves as directors observing what goes on in the theatre of everyday life, we are doing what Goffman called dramaturgical analysis, the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)