Nekojiru-So (Cat Soup) film poster, Japanese release
Animated film, 33min
Tatsuo Sato / Nekojiru
Japan
Feverish dreams, within dreams, within dreams. And nothing at all is quite what it seems. A delusional account of life, death and the divine. And all executed in the finest pantomime.
Twisting and turning and spiralling round. And every so often, hitting the ground. Then bouncing and bending. Expansion. Contraction. Enter a world of creative abstraction.
Realised with childlike simplicity, Nekojiru-So manoeuvres through complex functions of self and surrounds with ease. And we are no less for it. In fact, this film covers as much ground aesthetically as it does conceptually, providing that rarely achieved accessibility where appreciation can be found regardless of age or education.
Nekojiru-So is a story of a cat named Nyatta. But not only that; it is a story of two cats. And perhaps a little more. Nyatta finds his older sister leaving with a Jizou (the Japanese Ksitigarbha or Earth Treasurer: a bodhisattva who resigned his enlightenment in favour of representing the dwellers of the hells – us, and in particular, children) and decides to follow. He ends up catching them in a liminal plane; a scene of neutrality, the place in between. There stand Nyāko - his sister, and the Jizou. Hand in hand. A symbol of finality; her destiny is planned. In defiance he grabs her but tears her in twain. And now she exists in more than one plane. But the shaman reveals a symbol, arcane. For until she is whole she will not be the same. And so starts the journey to rekindle her flame.
The ensuing phantasmagorical epic is a classic story of necromancy. A shamanic journey beyond the limits of tangibility, with lessons to learn at each twist and turn. Featuring fantastic characters with shifting intentions in dream scapes and land scapes of elastic dimensions. From broodingly dark dark to blindingly bright; and readings from spectrums beyond that of sight.
This is, no doubt, pure psychedelica.
Iason Yannakos
you rock!
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