Movie Review: God's Own Country

God's Own Country *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Francis Lee.

Written by: Francis Lee.

Starring: Josh O'Connor (Johnny Saxby), Alec Secareanu (Gheorghe Ionescu), Ian Hart (Martin Saxby), Gemma Jones (Deidre Saxby).

 

I am sure that Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country will be compared a lot to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain – that 2005 masterwork, about two cowboys who fall in love, but can never admit it when they are not alone, on that mountain together, tending to the cows. The comparison is earned – both because this is another love story between men in a similar profession, and because Lee’ direction is remarkably assured for a first time director. He isn’t afraid of silences (there is very little music in the film – so when it is used, it works even better), and the cinematography, capturing a remote, farming region of Northern England is stunning and beautiful. But God’s Own Country is its own story – with its own characters, and it doesn’t follow the path that Brokeback Mountain did –for better or for worse.

 

The lead character is Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor) – a young man, just out of high school, who has watched his friends and schoolmates move away to college, while he toils at the family farm. He doesn’t have much choice – he’s an only child, his mom ran off years before and so he lives with his father, Martin (Ian Hart), who has had a stroke, and can only get around – slowly – using two canes, and his grandmother Deidre (Gemma Jones) – who makes it clear, without saying much, that Johnny will carry on his family’s legacy – whether he likes it or not. He doesn’t – and he isn’t very good at it either. Perhaps he could be if he cares – but he doesn’t. He half-heartedly works the farm, and then heads to “town” for a drink every night – and ends up back at home puking his guts out. When he heads to a livestock auction, we see him exchange meaningful glances with another young man – before they head to his trailer for rough, wordless sex. Outside of the trailer, Johnny barely acknowledges to the other man.

 

Things change with the arrival of a temporary worker from Romania – Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu). He’s going to be there for a week – just to help out – and he’s so good with the animals that Johnny immediately hates him. When the pair have to go spend a few days in a remote part of their land – to fix a fence, and mind some sheep – things change. Glances are exchanged, and soon the pair is rolling around in the mud. Like the mountain in Brokeback, this section of the farm is theirs entirely – no one else is around, they can be who they are, and be happy. It cannot last however – sooner or later, they have to return to the big house. While homosexuality is more broadly accepted now than ever before, it appears that the memo may not have reached this area of Northern England yet. And Gheorghe’s skin color – and status as a foreign worker – doesn’t exactly sit well with the locals either.

 

God’s Own Country is a difficult film to pull off. Johnny is not exactly a lovable character when we first meet him – he’s either drunk, throwing up, or half assing it at the farm – and when Gheorghe arrives, he even throws some of his own racial slurs at him (he does, as he does everything else – half-heartedly). He’s a very quiet character, and difficult to get a read on. This story is his however – and in the long tradition of British kitchen sink dramas, it isn’t a happy one at first. O’Connor does a lot with body language throughout the film – as his relationship with Gheorghe develops, he seems to move with more ease, more grace – as if he’s lighter – and it shows in his face. The other four major performances are all quite good as well – although none of them are as fully developed as Johnny. Gheorghe in particular is kind of a handsome, blank slate – he has good looks and charm, and seemingly endless patience. This is a story about Johnny coming to accept who he is – and going after what he wants – but while it’s easy to understand why Johnny wants Gheorghe, the reverse isn’t as clear. I did quite like the scenes late in the film with Ian Hart and Gemma Jones – two old pros if ever there were – who quietly, and quite movingly, let Johnny know that they support him – even if they don’t have the words to say it.

 

The ending of the film is too sentimental and happy for me – especially given what has come before it, and yet, I understand why Lee ends it this way. For years and years, when homosexual love stories were told at all (and they usually weren’t) they focused on tragedy and misery – and so the recent push back to that has been most welcome. And yet, I’m not quite sure this beautiful, assured film deserves the ending that it gets. It’s a small complaint, about a mostly excellent movie, but it’s a real one.

Movie Review: Brigsby Bear

Brigsby Bear *** / *****

Directed by: Dave McCary.

Written by: Kevin Costello & Kyle Mooney.

Starring: Kyle Mooney (James Pope), Mark Hamill (Ted Mitchum), Jane Adams (April Mitchum), Greg Kinnear (Detective Vogel), Matt Walsh (Greg Pope), Michaela Watkins (Louise Pope), Ryan Simpkins (Aubrey Pope), Alexa Demie (Meredith), Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (Spencer), Claire Danes (Emily), Chance Crimin (Logan), Beck Bennett (Detective Bander), Andy Samberg (Eric), Kate Lyn Sheil (Arielle Smiles).

 

The premise of Brigsby Bear is so odd and original, that it’s more than a little disappointing when the film doesn’t quite willing or able to completely follow through on it. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to admire about Brigsby Bear – which is one of the stranger films you will see this year, and yet, there is an ever darker, stranger – and better – film lurking somewhere in this material, than the makers don’t seem willing to fully embrace. What they have is weird and different – what they could have had could have been amazing.

 

The film stars Kyle Mooney – of Saturday Night Live fame – who also co-wrote the screenplay. He plays James, a kid somewhere in his mid-to-late 20s, and when we first meet him, we know immediately he is odd, but not why. He is obsessed with a TV show called Brigsby Bear – which he watches on seemingly old VHS tapes, in his windowless room. The show looks like something you would have seen on TV in the 1970s or 1980s – people is oversized costumes, low production values, a lot of moral lessons spoken to the camera, etc. James is way too old to be obsessed with this show – but he is anyway. Soon, we will learned why when police invade his home. His parents (Mark Hamil and Janes Adams) are arrested – and James is told he was kidnapped as an infant, and brought up in isolation by these two criminals. Brigsby Bear was the only show he ever had access to – and even stranger, it was never a real TV show at all. It was something that his father made in an old warehouse himself, and delivered weekly.

 

What follows from there is a weird, mixed bag of a film. James is returned to his real family (mother and father Matt Walsh and Michaela Watkins, 19 year old sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). His obsession with Brigsby Bear continues – he even shares some of the tapes with Aubrey’s friends – who become his new friends as well – and eventually, they all get the idea that what they need to do is “finish” the show – give it the wrap up it deserves.

 

There is an odder, darker film in this material somewhere – but for the most part Mooney, co-writer Kevin Costello and director Dave McCary abandon it to tell a story about the power of creativity. Perhaps James will eventually grow up – and leave Brigsby Bear behind – but until he finishes it, he can never do that. The movie then isn’t about leaving obsession behind – but fully embracing it. Down that path is another, darker message that the film doesn’t explore either. The film builds to a heartwarming climax – but I’m not sure it works, and I really what to know what is next. Can James ever move forward, and become a fully functional person, or will he always been this way. The movie doesn’t have an answer – and I don’t think it even asks the question.

 

All of this probably makes it sound like I didn’t like Brigsby Bear. That isn’t true. This is an odd film to be sure, but it is one that is loaded with laughs – some from the Brigsby Bear show, and making of the finale, some from James just not knowing much about the world. Mooney, who is one of the oddest comedians that SNL has ever hired, has a sweetness to him that works here. I do think he could have handled the darkness as well, had they decided to go there – but they don’t.

 

The result then is an odd movie, that doesn’t quite work, but is very original and weird. It reminded me of the work of Michel Gondry – which is often this way as well, except when he has worked with Charlie Kaufman, who brings in a deeper, darker, more complex element. Brigsby Bear is Gondry without Kaufman, which is okay – but nothing compared to when the two team up. I want to see the next film from this team – but I do hope the fully embrace the weirdness and darkness, implied here, when they make it.

Movie Review: Their Finest

Their Finest *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Lone Scherfig.

Written by: Gaby Chiappe based on the novel by Lissa Evans.

Starring: Gemma Arterton (Catrin Cole), Sam Claflin (Tom Buckley), Bill Nighy (Ambrose Hilliard), Jack Huston (Ellis Cole), Paul Ritter (Raymond Parfitt), Rachael Stirling (Phyl Moore), Richard E. Grant (Roger Swain), Henry Goodman (Gabriel Baker), Jake Lacy (Carl Lundbeck), Jeremy Irons (Secretary of War), Eddie Marsan (Sammy Smith), Helen McCrory (Sophie Smith).

 

Their Finest is the third movie about Dunkirk I have seen this year – following Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Joe Walsh’s Darkest Hour – although, in fairness, it was made before either of those films, and likely on a much smaller budget. It’s a good addition to those two films – showing the British Homefront - and importantly women – during this time. The film wants to be an old fashioned romantic comedy, mixed with the drama of a war picture – and it’s not always an easy mixture of tones. But for the most part, the film is warm and funny and charming – and even if the romance doesn’t quite have the snap of the best screwball comedies from the time period it presents that it clearly wants to, it’s charming enough.

 

The film stars the always charming Gemma Arterton as Catrin Cole – a Welsh lass, in London with her “husband” – artist Ellis (Jack Huston) – who unlike most of the men his age, isn’t in the army, having been wounded in a previous battle. He makes no money, so she’s still working – getting a job at the Ministry of Information – and eventually, getting assigned to work on what amounts to a propaganda film about Dunkrik – to inspire the Homefront. The “true” story aspect of the movie they’re making is most bull – they know it, and don’t really care. Catrin has been hired to write “the slop” – meaning, the woman’s dialogue – since the film will be about two sisters, who steal their father’s boat to help with the evacuation at Dunkirk. Of course, she won’t be “paid the same as the lads” – but it’s not nothing. She finds herself teamed up with Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) to write the film – and he’s obviously a better match for her than Ellis, and the two quickly fall into a quippy, flirtatious friendship.

 

There is a lot to like about Their Finest. It the film – directed by Lone Scherfig – making her best film since her debut, An Education, back in 2009 and written by Gaby Chiappe, based on a novel by Lissa Evans – and this trio of women certainly want to present the casual, deeply ingrained sexism of the film. They do this well, but don’t make the mistake many modern do, and try to have a revisionist view of history – Catrin stands up for herself, sure, but not in a way out of line for 1940. She wants more money – but doesn’t bat and eye when she’s told she won’t be paid as much as the men for example. Or the way Ellis immediately assumes she’ll come with him when his art exhibition goes on tour – abandoning her own career, even though it pays for everything.

 

It really is the performances that make the film truly work though – a no one is more of a joy to watch than Bill Nighy, playing an age ham of an actor – once famous for a Detective series, now slumming it in anything he can get. Nighy is a delight in every scene he’s in. Arterton is very good too as Catrin – she’s got a warm, open face that makes you immediately root for her. She doesn’t quite have the comedy chops I would have preferred – I was kind of hoping the workplace, flirty scenes would go full Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant – but neither she nor Claflin are up to that. Instead, theirs is a warmer, more toned down relationship.

 

The movie hums along at a brisk pace, and is mainly a hell of lot of fun. Occasionally, the film introduces some darker moments along the way – and we prepare ourselves from the beginning for not everything to work out. This doesn’t always work – but it works enough of the time to make it work. Their Finest is a fine film – a comfortable, warm funny film that hits the right emotional notes. It never reaches greatness – but it is so consistently good, you don’t much mind.

Movie Review: Whose Streets?

Whose Streets? *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Sabaah Folayan.

 

The documentary Whose Streets assumes that anyone watching it knows what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown Jr., at the hands of a white police officer, and what happened – months later – when the decision was made not to charge that officer with any crime. This film isn’t trying to be the definitive documentary about that case – what happened and why – and doesn’t seek to tell “both sides of the story”. Instead, what it wants to do is place the viewing in the middle of the black community of Ferguson in those days – to feel their anger and frustration – and watch as they make their voices heard. Yes, some of those voices were violent –but most of them were not. The movie, which utilizes a lot of footage taken on the ground – either by the documentary crew itself, or by people using their phones – doesn’t just document the protests or the “riots” – but the day in, day out frustrations of those who live there. I don’t know how well the film will hold 20 or 30 years from now – when viewers may well need the context to make sense of what they are seeing – but for viewers who know the story now, it is a vital and important work – a counter narrative of what we’ve seen on the news.

 

Whose Streets certainly has an agenda – but that agenda is to get the feeling of what happened in Ferguson, from the people who live there. The documentary shows a wide range of people in the Black Lives Matter movement – and other organizations – and they express a wide variety of thoughts and opinions on the subject. Some are hard to argue with, if you’ve been paying attention – some are more extreme, and you may well question what you think about them. The cameras capture them all – and basically, just wants to give everyone their voice.

 

There are arcs throughout the film – undeniable, Brittany Farrell will stand out to most people. She is a nursing student and a single mother to a daughter, she is raising to question what she hears and sees – and stand up for what is right. She puts everything on hold to pursue activism throughout the film – and will eventually risk arrest with a protest blocking traffic (this is a protest I’ve never quite understood – I’m not sure what it’s end goal is, to get people on your side, by inconveniencing them? – and yet the response she gets, compared to the white woman who just decides she isn’t going to stop for the people block her car is ridiculous). Brittany’s story is relatable in many ways – she is getting married to Alexis, and their relationship – and that to her adorable, hilarious daughter gives the film an emotional backbone.

 

Mostly though, while we see the same faces again and again, this is a story about the collective, not about individuals. This is a story of the people of Ferguson, who took to the streets to voice their displeasure – and found themselves in the middle of a national news story. As they say repeatedly throughout the film, when this is all over, they still have to live here. The protests have died down – as have the media interest – but this isn’t over.

Classic Movie Review: Starting Over (1979)

Starting Over (1979)

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula.   

Written by: James L. Brooks based on the novel by Dan Wakefield.

Starring: Burt Reynolds (Phil Potter), Jill Clayburgh (Marilyn Holmberg), Candice Bergen (Jessica Potter), Charles Durning (Mickey Potter), Frances Sternhagen (Marva Potter), Austin Pendleton (Paul), Mary Kay Place (Marie), MacIntyre Dixon (Dan Ryan).

 

Divorce wasn’t something new in 1979 – but Hollywood dealing with it in any sort of serious way, was at least somewhat new at the time. Paul Mazursky’s wonderful An Unmarried Woman had come out the previous year – and was a hit, and an Oscar favorite, and Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer ended up being the biggest box office and awards hit of 1979. Those two films are, for various reasons, still remembered today – but Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over has pretty much been forgotten. It’s easy to see why – it’s not a great film and Pakula is one of those great journeymen directors – who did everything from Klute to The Parallax View to All the President’s Men to Sophie’s Choice – who is more craftsmen that auteur, and those guys tend to get overlooked. It is the first screenplay by James L. Brooks – in between his sitcom career and the Oscar winning Terms of Endearment (1983) – but those looking for Brooks’ best work, will find it elsewhere. The film is uneven – Roger Ebert called it a sitcom version of An Unmarried Woman – and he wasn’t exactly wrong. Yet, it does have three good performances at its core, and it is trying for something interesting. I don’t think it quite gets there – Brooks it seems didn’t have the guts to go where he would in Broadcast News, and instead the film insists on a happy end that doesn’t make much sense – but this little curiosity of a film is worth seeing.

 

The film opens with Paul (Burt Reynolds) and his wife Jessica (Candice Bergen) breaking up – she wants him to leave, he doesn’t want to, but does anyway – something made easier by the discovery that she has been unfaithful to him. As he leaves, the audience is treated to, for the first time, a hilariously bad song by Jessica, sung wonderfully awfully by Bergen – who is convinced she’s going to have a hit on her hands (and, of course, she’s right). Paul ends up moving to Boston to be near his brother (Charles Durning), and try and peace his life back together. It is his brother’s wife who introduces him to Marilyn (Jill Clayburgh) – a nursey school teacher, who at first doesn’t want to date Paul – she has had it with divorced guys –but eventually she relents. They seem perfect for each other – he even says as much to his “divorced men’s support group” – but is he really over Jessica? When she shows up in Boston one day, wanting him back, what will he do?

 

Reynolds is, I think, an underrated actor. Sure, he has done more bad movies than good (and some are downright horrible), but he was one of the biggest male movie stars of the 1970s for a reason. He has an effortless charm about him here – making the fact that women are drawn to him understandable. Bur Reynolds also does a fine job showing us Paul’s insecurity – his hesitation in jumping into bed with Marilyn, the way he loves her, but is still drawn to Jessica. Of the three leads, it is Reynolds who has the most screen time, and delivers the most subtle performance. His two female co-stars both got Oscar nominations – and they are both wonderful, but their roles give them more showoff moments. Bergen steals every scene she is in here – she is downright hilarious when she sings, and she is the right mixture of infuriating, alluring and annoying to make at least some of what Paul does plausible. Clayburgh is wonderful as Marilyn as well – a somewhat kooky woman, who is happy in her life alone without Paul before he arrives, but willingly lets her guard down – even if she fears being destroyed. Both women are able to convey at least some complexity underneath all the humor in the movie – and judging on the basis of this movie, it’s a shame neither was given a great role in a Woody Allen movie at some point. They would have nailed them.

 

The problem with the movie is mainly in Brooks’ screenplay. While his ear for dialogue was already well-tuned – there is never a doubt about who wrote the thing – the plot mechanics creak under the weight of all the clichés, and as the film progresses, the characters make decisions that just don’t make any sense – right up to the happy ending. I know that Brooks is dealing with romantic comedy standards here – but it makes for an uneasy mixture with the divorce drama he’s also writing. By the time he made Terms of Endearment, he had mastered this tricky comedy/drama tone he does so well (he perfected it in Broadcast News) – but here, whether it’s Pakula’s direction (he was a journeyman – but many a thriller journeyman) or more likely Brooks’ screenplay, the mix is off.

 

Starting Over is an interesting film – it’s interesting to watch Brooks before he perfected his style, it’s interesting to see Pakula try his hand at comedy, and it has three performances that help paper over the films rough patches – mostly (as great as Clayburgh is, I have a tough time with that last scene in the movie). It’s mainly been forgotten – and there’s a reason for that. But it was also an Oscar nominated hit in 1979 – and there was a reason for that as well.

Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh.

Written by: Michael Green based upon the novel by Agatha Christie.

Starring: Kenneth Branagh (Hercule Poirot), Penélope Cruz (Pilar Estravados), Willem Dafoe (Gerhard Hardman), Judi Dench (Princess Dragomiroff), Johnny Depp (Edward Ratchett), Josh Gad (Hector MacQueen), Derek Jacobi (Edward Henry Masterman), Leslie Odom Jr. (Dr. Arbuthnot), Michelle Pfeiffer (Caroline Hubbard), Daisy Ridley (Mary Debenham), Marwan Kenzari (Pierre Michel), Olivia Colman (Hildegarde Schmidt), Lucy Boynton (Countess Elena Andrenyi), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Biniamino Marquez), Sergei Polunin (Count Rudolph Andrenyi), Tom Bateman (Bouc).

 

The best thing about the new version of Murder on the Orient Express is Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Agatha Christie’s infamous detective Hercule Poirot. Sporting the best mustache I have ever seen, Branagh somehow finds new dimensions to play in Poirot – even for those of us who have seen Albert Finney’s Oscar nominated turn in the 1974 original film, and who had a mother who watched a lot of David Suchet as Poirot, and as such, watched a lot himself. Branagh’s Poirot is almost a tragic figure – he certainly is a sad one – pining over his lost love, and admitting that his curse is that he can only “see things the way they ought to be”, so when something is amiss, it sticks out. This makes much of his life miserable – but makes him a great detective. But despite being this sad figure, it’s still a joy to watch Branagh in this role – he’s funny and clever, and has Branagh swinging for the fences again, in a role a worthy of him, for the first time in I’m not sure how long (yes, he’s very good in Dunkirk – but that’s a different kind of performance). If they announced tomorrow, a new movie or television series with Branagh as Poirot, I’d be enthused.

 

The problem with the new version of Murder on the Orient Express however is that Branagh, the director, doesn’t seem to put as much care into the storytelling as he does in crafting his own performance – or growing that mustache (please tell me it was real). After a crackerjack start at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem the film never really finds it footing again once we are on board the titular train. Part of the problem is that there are so many character (this version even combines two together to help) – but with 15 other major characters, played by one of the best ensembles you can hope for, the result is that most of the cast is underutilized. Essentially, they all get introduced with one character trait, and stay that way. It isn’t that some of them aren’t having fun – Michelle Pfeiffer is a man hungry widow certainly seems to be having a blast, as does Judi Dench as an elder Princess, but the movie does a poor job of keeping the characters sorted out. Every time Manuel Garcia-Rulfo’s Marquez shows up, you wonder who the hell he is for example – and for a long stretch of the movie, you forget that there is even a Count and Countess on the train. Other great performers are barely utilized – poor Olivia Colman and Willem Dafoe – and some are given little to work with other than their costumes – to be fair, Daisy Ridley and Leslie Odom Jr. both look amazing in those costumes, but you wish there was more there. There’s a problem in your Murder on the Orient Express adaptation when Johnny Depp’s Ratchett has more screen time that practically anyone note named Hercule.

 

Perhaps some of these flaws could be forgiven in an overall better film. After all, you have a great Poirot here, the costumes and art direction are superb, and Branagh and cinematographer Harris Zambarloukos do what they can to try and open up the story a little – hard to do when the story is confined to a train, and that train is stopped in its tracks alongside a mountain. But the biggest problem with the film is that it screws up precisely the part of the movie where you cannot screw up – the finale, the “solution” to the murder – which is stories like this is always the key moment, and always takes a long time, because the plot is so elaborate that Poirot needs to explain it for a good 15 minutes or so. First of all, the way he even comes to figure everything out is never really explained – he’s putting pieces together that the audience didn’t have, which doesn’t seem fair – and second, his big long explanation is muddled and confusing. It leaves you scratching your head – and I knew the solution before I saw the movie.

 

Branagh is a talented filmmaker, who has had to change with the times over his 30 year career. Despite the fact that he’s directed some of the best Shakespeare movies of all time – I’ll take his 1996, 4 hour Hamlet over any other version of that play – no one much seems interested in financing those anymore. So he directs a Jack Ryan movie, he directs Thor for Marvel, he directs Cinderella for Disney – and all of those, he brings something of himself to the film. He does so here as well – but this time, it never quite comes together. The movie hints as a sequel – Death on the Nile – and I would love to see it. Although, I think I’d replace Branagh as director, and just let him and his glorious mustache take over the screen.

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.