Cat Stew: Return to Cat Soup

I've never really liked revisiting old reviews. As much as I wished I'd written something differently in an old review, as strong as the urge can be to go back and completely rewrite an old analysis is, I find I just can't. So rather than a dozenth try at rewriting it, I figured I'd do something different. I want to write about cat soup, again.

I feel strange about my review of cat soup, the same way i feel strange about the movie oddly enough. in a way before i even typed in the first paragraph i was setting myself up for failure. given my experience, taking into consideration my voice and formatting, there was no way i could ever in a million years fit absolutely everything i feel about this movie into one cohesive essay, but i went ahead anyways, and as on and off sometimes bitter sometimes sweet i feel about it, i still don't think i did half bad writing about cat soup.

i covered the plot. i covered some scenes i like, specifically i remember how cathartic it felt walking through the final closing moments of the film; how effectively cat soup managed to end on the most inconclusive, surreal, utterly terrifying closing note possible. i talked about the music, albeit it tortures me till this day i didn't use words like "undergirded" or "frightening insincerity" to describe the earlier portions of the soundtrack before it spirals into pure dark atmosphere and sinister ambience. most importantly to me, i talked about what this movie means to me as a wonderfully unique morbid exploration of life and death. I've always felt this macabre fascination with all matters holy afterlife or atheistic impermanence and this movie was what really awakened a true autistic hyperfixation that still plagues me till this day.

but no matter what i do it feels like this movie won't leave my mind, no matter how much i feel like i've completed my interpretation of the plot it never feels like enough. there's something mystical about this movie, something about a movie so foreign, so unabashedly strange, so uncaringly bizarre, so utterly unique in its execution and its exploration of themes. in that sense i feel like i'll never stop thinking about this movie, not till i feel like i've analysed everything there is to analyse.

I watched Cat Soup at a strange time in my life. right when I’d started questioning things I always took for granted. It hit at the perfect moment, when I was horrifically bored and in the mood to be challenged. As I picked apart this movie, I found myself doing the same with ideas that had shaped my perspective for years.

It felt like an awakening, using imagery to give shape to thoughts I hadn’t yet put into words. It dug into life, death, and the unknown in a way I’d never seen before, and it completely redefined what I expect from anything I watch.

and i can't tell if i love or hate the fact that a movie like this might only come once in a cosmic accident, like the alignment of dead stars. the fact that probably hundreds of movies out there like this exist but are buried under all the faff and near inaccesible from sheer obscurity.

cat soup is a masterclass in silent up to your interpretation storytelling that thrives on a near ubiquitous, experience defining ambiguity. it weaves a thin simplistic plot into a complex web of themes and hidden meaning all set to the backdrop of gorgeous ambient wonderfully off-beat music and drop dead spectacular set pieces that perfectly embody this less elegant, more monstrous, more surreal, and more horrifying interpretation of the afterlife that feels so alien yet so eerily authentic.

to me, it's an example of the closest something can be to perfection. it goes beyond ambiguity. it weaponises your confusion. it denies viewers anything resembling an easy answer. it pulls you deep and leaves you gasping for closure. cat soup whether by intention or accident is a movie that etches itself into your mind. it clings to you like the aftertaste of a dream.

i still truly believe that compared to anything, cat soup is the greatest piece of media i will ever bear witness to.

p.s so i had to censor some parts because they were too offensive so if some of these parts read weird that's because i ccped myself hhaahhahhaha mfw race religion and royalty