Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) is a highly influential Japanese film director. He was a modernist bridging classical and experimental cinema, famous for literary adaptations and humanist themes. 'The Burmese harp', 'Tokyo Olympiad' and 'I am a Cat' are his best known films. His 'I am a Cat' was an adaptation of Natsume Soseki's (1867 - 1916) novel 'I am a Cat' in 1975. The film focuses on the character named Kushami, a school teacher and a cat that observes the teacher and his neighbours in late 19th century Japan. Kon Ichikawa has excellently used his filmography and directorial vision in assessing societal norms and human behaviour through the effective usage of humour and Irony.
The movie 'I am a Cat'
centres round a Japanese teacher Kushami Sensei, who is a husband and father of
three children. He is a lazy bones and
ditherer who continually bemoans his position as a middle school teacher. He wastes his huge amount of time by
uselessly chatting with his friends. The
Cat is the narrator, who observes everything and everyone in that family. Actually through the Cat's random
observations many incidents are disclosed.
The Cat observes his family, the scholars and young intellectuals who
visit Kushami every now and then. The
Cat also perceives Japanese food, life style, education system and so on. Thus the Cat's eye becomes a typical tool of
criticism on the complexities and absurdities of human nature.
Kon Ichikawa has used
the Cat's observations to critique the foibles and pretensions of the characters
without losing the novel's spirit with his exceptional cinematic style. The Cat even observes the frivolous nature of
love between a young scholar and a girl from a rich family. 'I am a Cat' ends with a comic scene of the
Cat's consuming alcohol and falls in to a water pot. However, the housemaid saves it. Those shots are all filmed amazingly. Thus the film 'I am a Cat' becomes one of the
best satires on societal norm and human behaviour of the late 19th century
Japan.
------Thulasidharan V
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