A retarded couple decide to adopt a cat and arrange to collect one from a sanctuary in a month's time when it has finished medical treatment. They are warned that if they fail to collect on time it will be euthenized. Realising that this awesome responsibility will mean the end of their old lives they decide to live the next month as if it is their last. He quits his old job and finds an even worse one, while she quits hers and seeks fame as an internet sensation, failing miserably. She either consoles or punishes herself for this with a shallow sexual relationship with an older creep who makes his young daughter dig her own grave then buries her in it up to her neck at night. Her depressed boyfriend consoles himself by confiding in an octogenarian philosopher, and the moon. They are both so absorbed by their own pathetic little problems that they miss the deadline and the cat is put down.
The cat knows nothing of any of this, only that it is going to be adopted some time in the near future. In its occasional monologues to us it describes its joy at knowing that soon it will be taken home by a kind, caring couple and that it will never be cold, or wet, or hungry, or lonely ever again. After death it describes its surprise at finding itself, in spirit, still in the same cage, apparently for ever.
I'm a cat lover and this broke my heart. As soon as the film finished I found my cats and made a huge fuss of them to cheer myself up. They thought I had gone soft in the head.
Samuel Becket wrote plays about people like this, infuriating because of their inertia, their complete inability to move forward with their lives and find joy, or even authentic misery. His plays only make sense to me if I decide that these are not characters but thoughts inside someone's head. His plays are about unproductive thought, the ideas that stop us from finding the will power to seize control of our own lives and instead make us weak and passive. The pathetic 30-something couple are a circular internal monologue that cannot be defeated through discourse, an ego game that can only be abandoned altogether by an act of will. The cat is a baby, a better job, a better house, a move to another town, or anything that promises the possibility of change, unless it is forgotten about because the thinker cannot rise above his/her ego games.
The cat is The Future.
Cat lovers: does that help you to feel any better?
The cat knows nothing of any of this, only that it is going to be adopted some time in the near future. In its occasional monologues to us it describes its joy at knowing that soon it will be taken home by a kind, caring couple and that it will never be cold, or wet, or hungry, or lonely ever again. After death it describes its surprise at finding itself, in spirit, still in the same cage, apparently for ever.
I'm a cat lover and this broke my heart. As soon as the film finished I found my cats and made a huge fuss of them to cheer myself up. They thought I had gone soft in the head.
Samuel Becket wrote plays about people like this, infuriating because of their inertia, their complete inability to move forward with their lives and find joy, or even authentic misery. His plays only make sense to me if I decide that these are not characters but thoughts inside someone's head. His plays are about unproductive thought, the ideas that stop us from finding the will power to seize control of our own lives and instead make us weak and passive. The pathetic 30-something couple are a circular internal monologue that cannot be defeated through discourse, an ego game that can only be abandoned altogether by an act of will. The cat is a baby, a better job, a better house, a move to another town, or anything that promises the possibility of change, unless it is forgotten about because the thinker cannot rise above his/her ego games.
The cat is The Future.
Cat lovers: does that help you to feel any better?