Movie Review: Kedi

Kedi **** / *****

Directed by: Ceyda Torun.

 

One of this I noticed on my honeymoon – when we stopped in both Greece and Turkey – is that there are animals everywhere – cats and dogs, who just seem to roam the streets, sleeping wherever they want, and obviously getting fed – since none of them seemed too skinny. It may seem like a small difference between Europe – or at least, those parts of Europe (I didn’t seen any strays in Italy for example) and North America – and yet I think it’s a sign of how in many ways Europeans are simply different – more laid back, and easygoing. Or, at least they were – because now that “progress” has started to catch up, apparently this way of life is in jeopardy. The documentary Kedi opens with a quote about how long cats have roamed the streets of Istanbul – how they’ve seen empires rise and fall, and no one quite knows when they got there – they’ve just always been there. The documentary, which runs just under 80 minutes, is a portrait of 7 cats, and their humans, in Istanbul. Some of these people own their own pet cats – inside cats – but most of them do not. But they get to know, and love, the cats that they see in their everyday life. They feed them, care for them, take them to the vet if need be, and basically love them – but, and this is also key, they let the cats be themselves. Cats are not idiot attention whores like dogs are – they don’t need you to be their friend and tell them how good they are. You have to earn a cat’s love – and these people earn it.

 

I will admit that when Kedi came out in theaters earlier this year, I kind of brushed it off as inconsequential – if I wanted to watch 80 minutes of cat videos, I can go down a YouTube rabbit hole fairly easily. This is why I didn’t make the time to see it in theaters – a decision I now regret. There is a lot of great footage of cats in the movie – but it is decidedly not of internet cat video quality. Director Ceyda Torun’s camera gets on the ground level with the cats, and really does Istanbul from their point-of-view. The camera follows them everywhere – up trees, down into sewers, etc. – and gets the type of footage of cats people normally don’t get – mainly because cats always seem so secretive – they don’t want you to know what they’re doing all the time, unlike idiot dogs, who crave nothing but your constant attention.

 

Still, if Kedi were just 80 minutes of cat footage, it would be fun – but not much more. What makes it one of the year’s best documentaries, is that Torun and her camera pulls back, and really does get a sense of the entire community around the cats. She interviews the people who care for these seven cats (more than seven people, because some of these cats have multiple people), who explain the personalities of the cats, their habits, their likes and dislikes. Through the cats, we get to know the people, and through the people we get to know the cats.

 

As a country Turkey is obviously currently in a state of upheaval – but Torun never comments on this directly. There is one woman who talks about the difficulty of being a woman in Turkey, and many people mention the current changes happening in the city – changes they fear will end up hurting the cats. If there are more high-rises, less neighborhoods, where will they go? Torun doesn’t ignore the issues – she simply lets them play out in the background.

 

Kedi ends up being a surprisingly touching film. Yes, if like me you are a cat person, you’ll love it even more than if you’re not (especially if, like me, you married someone allergic to cats, so instead of having one, you’re stuck with an idiot dog – a lovable idiot dog, but an idiot dog just the same). But it’s more than just 80 minutes of cat videos.