I don't care about anything else, I just need to know whether this movie ends happily for the cat. I really, really, really need to know.
shareI wondered the same thing when I watched the trailer just now.
I've already seen the worst movie ever made, so it can only be uphill from there.
Me too! Forget those commitment-phobic, curly-haired nitwits, what happens to poor Paw Paw?! I don't even like animals all that much but the trailer had me yearning for the cat's survival. The couple's relationship, less so.
shareNo, unfortunately it does not end happily for Paw-Paw.
http://criterionmission.blogspot.com/
Oh no! :(
Don't think I care to see it now. It was bad enough to watch Paw-Paw's little bandaged paw in the trailer.
I've already seen the worst movie ever made, so it can only be uphill from there.
It's not THAT bad for the cat, especially given Miranda July's explanation. Nothing cruel happens to Paw paw... in a way. But it's sad.
sharePlease, tell me what happened. I can't hear what Miranda July's saying on the video in that link. Does Paw Paw die from whatever ailment made the vet say she could have 6 months (or 5 years)?
Like some here, all I cared about was the cat. The couple was so appallingly unlikable that I'm gobsmacked that anyone would make a movie about them. What a bunch of self-absorbed whiny yuppie fools (and this is coming from a yuppie).
Look, the cat is just a symbol of the couple's relationship. The cat is Sophie, who wants to run free but feels trapped. The relationship dissolves; hence the cat dies - but this means that only the caged situation is dead, and Sophie can be a free wild cat.
If you have no sensitivity to artistic symbolism, you should probably stay away from this movie - for your own good.
If this were true then as when the cat left the cage and died without love it would seem this is Sophie's fate as well. The relationship was the cage, it getting out without love means doom. This film is not about Sophie finding peace or happiness.
shareI beg to differ, it ends VERY badly ***SPOILER*** The 2 characters are so self absorbed they forget to pick up the cat after 30 days, even though they were told up front he would be euthanized. So Paw Paw is put to sleep. This happens after hearing that cat talk about how excited he is that his life is finally about to begin with his new family. The cat talks about how he has learned what time is and how hard it is to wait 30 days. After he dies, he says he is shocked and that his spirit remains in the cage, still waiting because he can't believe they really forgot about him. It's heartbreaking and frankly makes you despise the main characters. I couldn't have cared less about them at that point. I liked the first 3/4 of the film, but ended up hating it for being so grim and flat out cruel. Maybe there was some larger point that went over my head, but I was just depressed at the end.
shareThanks for clearing this up.
That the characters in the movie just forget PawPaw would have ruined the movie for us. Yes, it's fiction, nothing happened to any real cat, but still ...
We have adopted a cat from an animal shelter and just love her. It's just so sad how people treat animals -- tells you a lot about humans and their capacity for compassion, whether for themselves or other (sentient) beings.
Thanks, but no thanks. We'll give this movie a miss.
Thanks for this. I have no interest in seeing this movie anymore.
shareI had to comment incase my opinion changes your mind.
I agree with Litemakr that it's tragic; it's probably the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life, and like many it's fraught with a high level of investment (I'm yet another person who has an adopted cat who had previously been treated very badly and everytime I look at her and how cheeky she is now my heart swells with happiness that she enjoys herself) but what I would say is, imo, it's not just a cheap trick to exploit people caring about animals.
Personally I felt that there is a brilliant underlying point, and it depends whether someone is open to it or not. Imo the cat is not just a cat, but the symbol of making regrettable decisions and not focusing on when time is really important. It's not just animal lovers - anyone who gets to the section about the cat being put down will find the logic overwhelming that those couple of days (when they were late to pick up Paw Paw) are the only ones that are important. You either can't fathom why they, in their respective different ways, each character didn't remember it like a conscientious person would, or you can empathise that sometimes something important is forgotten because other things get in the way at the worst possible moment. The context of Jason not getting to Paw Paw is starkly different from Sophie's context and I think that's intentional to cover two different angles of human experience of regret. Their reasons to regret what happened and how it happens are radically different but both very human. Either way, you feel distanced by the wish that it could be different. Or the belief that in your own life you'd never do that to the cat. In my case, I found myself dissecting it from a logical point of view and found myself tearing my hair out when I came to the conclusion if my own cat had been injured when we were planning on adopting her and we were told she couldn't be with us for a month, I'd have visited her in the place everyday for an hour to get to know her and so she wouldn't be lonely. That would just be what I'd do. Then, my logical brain thought, that kills two birds - my cat isn't sitting there lonely fantasising about the future (I am a saddo at heart who worries about what my cat is thinking) and the carers would know we're committed, and I'd never forget to pick her up because it'd be a daily thing.
And that leads you to wonder why the characters don't do that? Why they focus on panicking that theres other things they need to do in the month to make up for how much they haven't done in their lives. They don't have the urge to get to know the cat even a little bit even though you'd think if they wanted to adopt it they'd want to a bit. If you got the urge to have an injured cat in your life why would you leave it on it's own for a whole month out of some midlife crisis reaction to the committment? But then it becomes obvious it's symbolic of any big thing in life that could be a beautiful edition to your happiness and a celebration of life, but by letting it pass you by it becomes a memory full of loss and regret about wasted life. From a symbolic perspective, what their minds tell them to do makes more sense - you can replace Paw Paw in your mind with other things people might cherish that they can regret losing and their behaviour seems less alienating.
Some people accuse her of writing in Paw Paw just because vet ownership is an emotionally charged subject and easy to manipulate. But it's also a good choice to ram home how important the loss is. She could have written the cliche of a love story where at the end someone is catching a plane to another country and the other person tries to stop them. Or she could have written generally about people regretting wasting their youth, or not taking a job. Or specifically she could have written a straight up story about thinking you want one and actually wanting another and making a mistake that loses the person you love. There's loads around. Imo she included the cat at the core of the story because it conveys the importance of time in relation to life and death in the perfect way, referencing something innocent and pure. If you set aside the practicality that most of us wouldnt' have forgotten about the cat, the film shows that the couple feel the loss of the cat, they take action too late and it's heartbreaking that the loss is caused by something so simple. It's a event that they wish they could change and will have to forever live with the fact that they can't in any way.
Personally I don't think seeing sad things is a bad thing sometimes. Most of the time only happy films with endings about succeeding against insurmountable odds are hailed as inspirational, or they have to be deadly serious and about huge events. If a film is so sad and in such an obviously surmountable way that it makes the viewer recoil from their sadness that they determine to never behave like the flawed characters, I'd view that as inspirational.
It's nothing like Me and You but personally it really helped with some stuff that was on my mind, genuinely helped me improve some things in my own life... even though I cried even picturing Paw Paw for a second for about a week :p
Wow.
I have mixed feelings about this film because it truly captured something heartbreaking. For me, while I understand everyone's criticisms of the characters, I think many of the thoughts you share here are right-on. And this is about something that's very difficult to articulate.
I agree. I have adopted cats too. I don't think Paw Paw is a heartless device - Paw Paw is one of the most potent and haunting symbols of heartbreak I've experienced.
And before I saw the movie, I was pretty dubious about a cat puppet with a voiceover. W o w. Who could have imagined how powerful such a device could be?
hels-dunleavy, you say:
You either can't fathom why they, in their respective different ways, each character didn't remember it like a conscientious person would (...) The context of Jason not getting to Paw Paw is starkly different from Sophie's context and I think that's intentional to cover two different angles of human experience of regret. Their reasons to regret what happened and how it happens are radically different but both very human. Either way, you feel distanced by the wish that it could be different. (...) But it's also a good choice to ram home how important the loss is. She could have written the cliche of a love story where at the end someone is catching a plane to another country and the other person tries to stop them. Or she could have written generally about people regretting wasting their youth, or not taking a job.(...)Imo she included the cat at the core of the story because it conveys the importance of time in relation to life and death in the perfect way, referencing something innocent and pure. If you set aside the practicality that most of us wouldnt' have forgotten about the cat, the film shows that the couple feel the loss of the cat, they take action too late and it's heartbreaking that the loss is caused by something so simple. It's a event that they wish they could change and will have to forever live with the fact that they can't in any way.
I think you've summed up what haunted me for a long time after seeing this, thank you. Please don't avoid this film on the basis that it is cruel or indifferent to the life of cats! - especially ones awaiting adoption. It is a tragedy - but it is also a brilliant, surreal ode to love, its possibilities, mistakes, and their consequences. "If a film is so sad and in such an obviously surmountable way that it makes the viewer recoil from their sadness that they determine to never behave like the flawed characters, I'd view that as inspirational." It's about the loss of love, and the desire to protect that love - too late. It's a beautiful, moving film with surprising and sometimes uneasy humour.
Agreeing right back at you - of course :) Potent and haunting, that's it exactly! This film felt more potent than practically any other I can think of, which I think many find hard to imagine since many don't think it covers an 'important' storyline. I could easily have been one of those people, I'm often the first to slag off anything indie that is trying really hard to be quirky and find deep meaning in something really stupid or superficial, but its so unique. I think alot of people want to write off the potency because surely you can only get such a feeling with a film about genocide or cancer or the loss of a child right? But what she does with it - getting to the core of what loss is - feels applicable to every experience, huge and small, that people can experience.
I have to admit I was prepared for the experience though. I had a really ambivalent feeling when I first saw The Future trailer, one part of me had a really strong feeling I was going to be very moved (it was almost spooky) and the other part, like yourself, thinking what if the talking cat really doesn't work? And I'd never heard of July, so I found Me and You (which I loved, if you've not seen it yet its the polar opposite to Future in tone, such a lovely film), and then I got a free ticket to see July talking about her work. She explained that while she editing Me and You, watching her really upbeat scenes all day, she was also going through a breakup, so she'd go into another room in her house every few hours or so, cry for a bit, and then go back and edit some more! She said she had wanted to capture all the intense things she was feeling and put it into something in the future, which it literally became. And naturally she warned people on that basis that its alot darker. So I kind of wonder what I would have thought if I'd gone in with no idea how sad it would be - some people in the audience I could hear seemed impatient that it was like her first film, I thought it was a shame they might have been put off just because they thought her film would be cute and sweet and funny like the first one... I like to think no matter how I'd ended up seeing the film I'd love it as much as I do now.
And I was haunted, that's exactly what it was - I couldn't get the story out of my mind, out of my skin; for over a week when all other distractions were stripped away (especially when I was going to bed) it would come in to my head and I couldn't get it out - the first night, I spent the whole night fussing over my cat then confusing her with my weird mood, AND there was a huge moon visible from where I sleep all night long! Thats never happened before, it was the weirdest thing :p
[P.S added to that for the first two paras of this my cat was sitting next to the laptop watching me type, then rolled her eyes and went to sleep on the bed - is there some voodoo surrounding this film?!]
Just wanted to thank you for your reply, I'm glad I got to chat with you about it, it's so reviled here on the imdb board. But as a filmd which, as you say, manages to capture the core of loss, and through such unusual means, it's stayed with me ever since. Familiar with her last film. I love it actually, but for entirely different reasons. It's a thoughtful and humorous film - also very sad in parts, but unusually redemptive. A break-up, you say? - I didn't know. But it makes sense... :)
I enjoyed chatting to you too, having a nice conversation sharing the same position on a film is not usually my style - I'm very argumentative often just for the sake of it, part critic part troll, but there is a small group of films I recoil from arguing about, and this is one of them :D
I've no interest in spoiling the movie by getting into a negative thread about why someone else hates it, but I've done it to other people so I accept if someone did depress me with their opinion I have ignore it since I've ripped to shreds other films people loved. Like Tree of Life, I've slammed that film in the past even though I know its just not right for me at this time; the troll part knows it doesn't have to tell someone else [or the world, if they start a fresh thread] that a film sucked but you want to just for the hell of it. You hit the nail again - this board is particularly depressing, even more reason I haven't looked through most of the threads. If the film had a much bigger audience and more evenly split, it might not be depressing but its getting so much flak, more than I thought it would...
Glad you love her last film - I wish she'd do more but at the same time both are just right as they are - if she did them more often [before she felt they were just right] they'd be less unique, less of a delicate balance of so many touches. Its funny, I've been wanting to buy the book 'Me and You and Memento and Fargo' for years and never connected what the 'Me and You' referred to, never even googled it to figure it out - I can be so clueless sometimes :p
Oh, no. Now I'm going to have to see it, and have my heart broken.
What's it going to be then, eh?
I couldn't agree more, there was NO reason for them to miss the pick-up date, they had it circled on their calendar, and they didn't exactly have busy lives/schedules (Did they even really work? How did they pay rent? Eat? Survive? They just sat around depressed about their ennui-ladden lives from what I could see), I HATED this film, HATED the "protagonists" - more so than any other film in recent history, AND I watched the uber-depressing "I Melt With You" right before this (and found this far worse!) - talk about a depressing night! I had to watch a brainless comedy to wash it all away. What a cheap trick using the cat like that (with that pitiful longing voice, ugh, talking about never having been loved, etc., excrutiating!), I expected more from July, really enjoying her other films. I will never watch another July film, I'm finished with her.
shareExcept the reasons why they missed the pick-up date are plain and obvious.
She's moved out of the apartment where the date is circled on the calendar.
He is paralyzed with depression, desperately wants to get that cat but can't bring himself to get there on time (as symbolized by his stopping time and being unable to start it, which is an amazing metaphor for depression).
They both felt terrible about screwing up.
I'm convinced that all the people who HATE (caps yours) any movie where the protagonists screw up like this are in DENIAL (my caps) about their own flaws, all the times they've been less than perfect. It takes at least a little bit of narcissism not to empathize with them, and instead hate them ... I'm above all that. No, you're not. No one is.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
Hmmm Interesting opinion considering your use of the quote from "Forbidden Planet" in your sig block. Narcissism is only a flaw when it tries to be a substitute for reality. We MUST love ourselves.
Having just now watched this film, I think I can say here is a new "value" system, envisioned by the filmmaker, for us to agree OR disagree with.
The cat, not healthy, like their relationship, dies. You may conceive of it "going to a better place", but really, it's just dead.
I like that this is available for watching on Netflix, I think it gives hope to all those film watchers and students and writers who ask " can I make a film?".
Now, after seeing this, they may ask "Should I?".
"The cat, not healthy, like their relationship, dies. You may conceive of it "going to a better place", but really, it's just dead."
Not sure how you can say it's 'just dead', when it is narrating what happened after its physical death.
It seemed to be somewhat happy where it was whilst narrating.
Well, that depends. The end of the cat dialog indicates that the cat is in heaven, warm & happy I don't know that that is such a bad thing. Not that I believe...
shareI just say "Beginners" with that wonderful dog, Arthur, so I'm ready for a movie motivated by a cat. I once was "adopted" by a stray cat in Dallas and "Timmy" provided quite an experience. I wonder about the sequence where the Internet is turned off.
shareGood grief! I was thinking about seeing this movie during the weekend at Cleveland Cinematheque. But having seen "One Day" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene" I really don't need a movie with a bad ending for a cat, especially as a cat owner. Glad to have avoided this one.
People should not fear their governments.Governments should fear their people.
Paw Paw dies alone the day before they come to pick her up. It's especially heartbreaking, because they're a day late so Paw Paw would've been able to spend his/her last day being loved for the first time if they'd actually came when they were supposed to. It's par for the course though, as the entire movie is quite bleak.
shareWhaaaaaaaaaaaat, I will never see this movie. Never ever. God. Too sad.
shareWHY? Just, WHY?
Why would someone put that in a movie?
Thanks so much for telling me this, so that I can definitely say I will never watch this movie.
I really really hate movies in which animals are used to manipulate the viewers. Get your epiphany some other way, film-makers.
(It's a good thing you can't curse on these boards, because the air around me is turning blue right now. I'm off to hug my cat.)
it's a talking cat! how ironic! what about a karaoke singing pet rock? and the really ironic thing. it won't sing rock songs. only barry manilow covers!
Oh, and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
no. not ironic. the device may seem ironic, but Miranda July is deadly serious here. the pathos is earned.
i think Paw Paw's lines were as well-written as any you will hear delivered this year, and they are the least ironic words said by any of the characters in this film. and that in turn is truly irony.
it'd be a shame if you all missed this film because of the cat's death. he almost exists outside the story. in a beautiful way.
pathos! no one at a funeral of someone they have loved with their soul has ever said about who is not anymore- 'pathos was earned'
Oh, and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
well, i didn't know this cat nor did i go to his funeral.
and but, the pathos i referred to was regarding what was evoked by the death of Paw Paw -- that it was not just some manipulative narrative device.
now that i think about it, his death was necessary so that he could narrate the film. he is not a talking cat within the timeline of the film.
It is not a cheap trick...it is very intricate to the plot...why do people want spoilers thinking that will tell them if they like a movie?...you have to actually experience it for yourself if you want anything to mean anything...cat doesn't die, u go see it and it ends up being a crappy movie-cat does die, u don't see it but it is actually very well written and a great film...either way knowing what happens in a movie without actually seeing it is pointless
share*** SPOILERS BELOW ***
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I could have handled the cat not living very long (he had a terminal medical condition).
I understand the ending and appreciate the cat is no doubt a metaphor however I caution anyone who loves cats to think twice about seeing this film nevertheless.
The soul crushing way 'Paw Paw' is neglected and let down by the sad excuses for human beings in this film just hits far too close to home for me, this is only made worse by the fact that rather than left to the imagination its feelings and expectations are made all too clear via July's dialogue.
Thanks I will miss that movie. I cam to see what happens to the cat. I refuse to watch the movie now.
share****SPOILERS****Actually, it's even more heartbreaking than that. It's clear Paw Paw was euthanized. The vet tells Sophie, "As I told your husband, we even waited an extra day for you to come." That means he could have lived the life he dreamed of if they had picked him up on August 26 or even 27.
Later, Paw Paw narrates that, to his surprise, he loves the warm, white-lit afterlife.
Yes, PawPaw died, but I feel he was at peace which is more than I can say for the couple.
shareNo. Paw Paw does not just die in his cage. The vet said they waited an extra day. Meaning that they euthanized Paw Paw!
That is is the only clue that Paw Paw didn't die naturally.
Basically they killed him by not picking him up on time.
They were so self absorbed they forgot.
It wasn't actually their fault that they didn't pick the cat up on time, because something mystical happened, and they were both utterly distraught by his death.
If anyone was to blame, then you could almost blame the moon... though it wasn't the moon's fault either - like the moon said, "I'm just a rock in the sky... and the world is so far away". :(
Violet
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I disagree with the people who replied to this question. I don't think it ends poorly for the cat. I think it ends well for the cat. The cat, for the movie, was stuck in a repetition of waiting and expectation, looking to the future for a brighter day and when the cat was released from the constant mental state of waiting for a brighter day in the future it was released into a warm and loving eternity that was endless.
And a note to some other person who left a comment, if the couple had returned for the cat it would not have been the cat getting to spend time with the couple on it's last day of life, the cat would have lived longer, it was euthanized, that's why it died, not because it only had one more day to live.
Thank you for helping to gel what I have mentally been trying to put together since seeing this film earlier today. It's very Zen.
I agree that it's clear that Paw Paw was euthanized, which calls into question the problem of personal responsibility. Does Paw Paw's serenity about his fate absolve Sophie and Jason of guilt for the repercussions of existential paralysis? Is the future just what it is, or can we affect it with thought and action? This is an ancient and cross-cultural discussion.
Agree with your point about the warm light scene; I think the cat is symbolic but still in a practical sense the film wouldn't be the same without that scene.
shareI'm a Gen Xer, and she sure as hell doesn't represent me. "Hipster douchebag pretentiousness" is her oeuvre.
[alien]"The needs of the many..."
"...outweigh the needs of the few."[alien2]