The Cats of Gokogu Shrine: Were cats tamed by people or did they pickup the habit of living with humans? Gokogu no Neko, a film by Soda where in, peaceful life in Snakamakame dedicated to the street cats of the area Ushimado in Okayama prefecture in Japan is very attractive.
Unlike the Jellicle nightmares of global children’s play in the form of magnificently bad 2019’s Cats and pets in documentary Kedi Kedi 2016 where animated characters were adopted , these beings are mostly allowed to just be. Even though it’s a story set in the shrine, Soda takes a different method as he respectfully takes clips aimed at the cats where the shot is intended to shake up then relax assuming the sun suppose to warm you up.
This is a work with an observational slant that never indicates that the fluff balls engage in action or exist in every day life and are often crucial or see something sacred in Ushimado. This is frequently how life is situated on the eastern shores of the country, or rather there s quite sweet lives ( of pets, children, humans etc) and smattering sights of death which is the real world.
The first part takes place in cherry blossom time countries after the war when old tomcats and little kittens appear for the first time. Most of the people in the audience say that the cats help them for therapy. They treat them as a baby—they clean their eyes, and buzz for some of their favorites (one girl adores one of the spots in a black- and-white cat saying “Ushi-kun, he’s my idol”).
You do not think so, or leave the pets in their clutches, and also put on a mask of cat claw, and harem fantasy of kemm fox sax. Their indistinctness is what draws chronicling directors about cats; they are the most lovely bucket in the film; she is soft, where we are free to stamp any pro-human story we like on her.
However, things take a dark turn for the cats who are eventually turned over into the care of the humans during an epic second-act interlude to which Kashiwagi and others, by force rescue the cats only to alter their reproductive capabilities.
Kosu, Soda’s producer, partner and also one of the proprietary’s content disappears from the scene just to grab and anesthetize a recalcitrant tom cat: “I’m sorry that you trusted me”. It will enhance quantity of life for the kitty colony but also realistically means that the creatures are glamourously dying off one by one in case of an Instagram friendly holiday resort no more.
As with all other aspects discussed so far, this emotion also applies to the residents of Ushimado, most of whom are elderly or retired (Soda being a long time resident has captured the life of his neighbours during more than one of his observational documentaries).
One notable character is Mr. Suzuki who is a bent-over 88 years old and a persistent voluntary* groundskeeper at the temple. He only tolerates the cats, he explains, but he shares more with the noise-making animals than he cares to admit.
Soda’s focus shifts to Suzuki once again, this time during gardening and cleaning. Who cares, just like why two cats happen to be standing in the graveryard in a carefree manner such activities are not about making a living – rather futile, more about not wasting one’s life than helping oneself.
Though The Cats of Gokogu Shrine contains a heart-wrenching closing credit ‘in memoriam’, it does not harbor any remorse over death, as that is just another stage in life. The Director’s fabled camera and mic are not well shielded from the rains and winds, to the point of making the viewer feel – quite ironically – small, even like a dog facing the elemental forces.
The film does not hold back even when the director gets overwhelmed by the kitty tornado and carries home a muddy tabby when a hurricane strikes. Along the way he lost the appetite to bother about these centre pieces of the show as the season altered from winter to summer; I mean this is not nature documentary, although it does get drunk with the invitees from the cats because they spend too much time at the sitting of the provincial council.
Nevertheless, what Soda was able to encapsulate in the course of the year with the animals and the film, is absolute, or rather, complete. The film does not try to draw any sweeping lessons out of the nature of the humans’ attachment to these animals or vice versa, well, perhaps, this is all – that each of us , at valentine’s day, just a useless refugee mole all sits under the fate.
‘The cats are the protagonists’, Soda says, from behind his camera to sarcastic school and perplexed fishermen. But while addressing on the stage prior to its Berlinale Forum world premiere he didn’t forget to thank ‘the people, cats, insects and trees’ of Ushimado which is how actually big this movie’s world is. This world of ours is pegged right from collective memories of wars to a one eyed cat licking its bum.
For the most part of our life, we have seen that, this is an unkind world for little things. But Soda lets it be so simple, so idealistic, well almost, in this small portion of near death experience, everything is in its right place.
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