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 atsuo 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.
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