Review of Kedi (2017) by Matt C — 07 Mar 2017

A documentary about street cats is something that I wasn't really expecting to come along, but its arrival didn't quite surprise me. Documentaries are probably the most eclectic of genres since they aren't really within much of a true genre themselves, but that doesn't stop Kedi from being more or less a comedy.

Staged with an ethnographic approach but capturing the innate humor of the material, Kedi has some good, interesting content that explores the effect and emotional connection of these animals to the citizens of Istanbul, and when it works, it works.

However, the movie loses its purpose in the latter half when its substance gets drowned out by stretches of simple "awww, they're so cute" footage, and given the oligopoly that cats have had over the Internet over the past decade or so with their silly exploits, Kedi is inconsistent in what it has to say and show.

The synopsis touched upon in the last paragraph is pretty sufficient for the movie as a whole. It's about stray cats in Istanbul and how those in the city collectively take care of them, and how they cats influence the humans' lives.

Some see them as affirmation of faith while some get services as one cat hunts down mice that appear near a restaurant. With 80 minutes of such simplicity, there isn't a ton to say. The movie presents a look at something that most wouldn't have even considered and does so in a lighthearted, often times funny way.

The camerawork often times follows the cats at their heights and tracks them amongst the city or edits together footage well in ways that highlight the humor. The first half does a good job at showing how Istanbul's culture is contingent upon these cats in several ways, but the second half becomes more of a montage of cats being cute, and isn't that what the Internet is for? No, but actually, despite good production values, the film does become a bit repetitive for a feature film.

Despite its being just 80 minutes, about ten minutes could have been shaved off, and this could have made for a very good short film of about half an hour had they condensed the material and cut the fat.

I'm sure that tons of footage was shot for this, but the final product is still a "kill your darlings" situation. Kedi is a movie about cats that's about Istanbul and its people, and the mileage that the film gets out of you will depend on your interests for those things.

It worked for me for a while, but as a feature film, it doesn't have enough substance to stretch along its runtime, even considering the times that the movie made me laugh with its inherent cuteness and light touch.

6.5/10, okay, C+, average, etc.