Last week I went to see Cats, the movie. I fully expected to hate it, having forgotten the wonder the nerdy, musicals-obsessed 13 year old I once was felt years ago in the Bradford Alhambra. In fact, I went along with my snarkiest friend from my university days, and we looked forward to sniggering our way through it We couldn’t have been more wrong.
This film is a masterpiece. A bonkers, terrifying, glorious masterpiece.
If you don’t know T.S. Eliot, he’s one of the most complex and dark modernist poets. His work is non-linear, intertextual, nihilistic and yet achingly tender and, well, human. Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats, though, is arguably his most accessible work: a collection of rhymes for kids about the secret lives of cats. It’s adorable, but there’s no plot there, so Lloyd Webber incorporated other more sinister themes from Eliot’s work to pull it together. Eliot had written about an idea of the cats ascending to the “heaviside layer” to be reborn, and this is the crux of one of the most beloved musicals of all time: a whimsical, heart-warming tale about all cats longing for death. Nobody seemed to notice the darkness.
Until now.
Maybe we are happier suspending our disbelief when it’s theatre. Sure, these singing, leotard-clad humans on the stage are cats now. We buy it. But put them in CGI movie and suddenly it’s jarring. Why aren’t they MORE catlike? (A criticism I’ve heard a few times is that these cats have no visible butthole. Did the stage show actors ever get that note?)
Cats isn’t just a movie about cats, it’s a cat in movie form. It’s cute, but it’s also feral. It takes all the rules of cinema and methodically bats them off the shelf to smash on the floor, making full eye contact with you while it does it.
Take the costuming decisions. The cats interact with oversized props from the human world, but some (but by no means all) wear “cat-sized” clothes and shoes. Judi Dench and Idris Elba wear fur coats over their, um, fur coats. Rebel Wilson literally pulls off her own fur to reveal human clothing underneath. James Corden begins his number in human evening dress and ends it naked, but with cat fur that exactly mimics his costume. Some cats have shoes, others dance in bare, disturbingly human feet. It’s undeniably consistent in its inconsistency.
What this means is that the film just does not let you stop paying attention. Every time you start to settle into the rhythm of the film, it changes. One minute the tone is panto brought to you by Disney, the next it’s Rocky Horror performed by the Royal Ballet. The actors all manage to be beautifully human and disgustingly feline at the same time. Ian McKellen embodies elderly theatre luvvie (perhaps not a stretch) and manky old cat that you kinda want to stroke but you know he’s going to dribble on you in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. You can practically smell him from the screen. Idris Elba’s, well, I can only call it skintight skin, and menacingly sexual dance moves made me wish I’d never read that fun fact about cats having spiny penises. Laurie Davidson is an adorably awkward amateur magician while also being that one cute cat on your street that really wants to come up to you for a fuss but doesn’t quite dare.
Even the most famous song from the musical, Memory, is strange and new now. A far cry from the wistful mewing of Elaine Paige, Jennifer Hudson hisses and snarls out her rage at the world, her nose streaming like the nose of a sick, stray moggy who’s ready to crawl away and die.
I understand the negative reactions. After all, people go to see a musical about cats expecting to relax, and this film Will Not Have It. No wonder they’re feeling disturbed.
But here’s the thing. It’s disturbing us on purpose. It has to be. This isn’t a film that tried to hit a certain tone and missed the mark. It’s the single finest example of Brechtian alienation I’ve seen. It pulls you in and out of the illusion until you don’t remember what real IS any more. It sings the song of itself with utter joy and it doesn’t care about what you think.
By the time one lucky feline has been chosen by the Jellicle Cult to float joyfully past a giant Bovril sign to her death in the upper atmosphere, you’ve surrendered to a very T.S. Eliot mindset: this world makes no sense, and it is terrible, and it beautiful.
Shantih Shanthi Shantih