Skip to content
OKCMOA Oklahoma City Museum of Art
  • Visit
  • Art
  • Film
  • Store
  • Search
Menu
  • Visit
  • Art
  • Film
  • Store
  • Search
Hamburger Menu Icon
Hamburger Menu Icon
  • Tickets
  • Membership
  • Donate
Menu
  • Tickets
  • Membership
  • Donate

Follow

Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Twitter YouTube
Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube
  • Museum Blog
  • Museum Films Blog
  • Press
Menu
  • Museum Blog
  • Museum Films Blog
  • Press
  • October 6, 2014

The Behavior of Objects and a Coup de Cinema: On The Strange Little Cat and Bird People

Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on email

If the question, “What is Cinema?” defined mid-twentieth century film theory, a new inquiry, in its many connotations, seems more appropriate for our fractured and fragmented digital age: where is cinema? The numerous possible responses to this question tell us much about the particular experience of film-going in 2014, from the rise of new exhibition platforms (streaming services in our homes) to the mutating forms (digital hybrids, long-form television, video games) that reveal the ever-changing ways in which we consume audio-visual storytelling. Perhaps the most literal answer to this question – the geographical one – is no less telling: as new cinematic hot-spots continue to emerge in places such as Turkey (Cannes Palme d’or winner Winter Sleep, 2014) and the Philippines (Norte, the End of History, 2013; a September OKCMOA Film premiere), our picture of film history, and where films matter most in 2014, continues to evolve.

Among the richer places for film art in the past decade-and-a-half has been Germany, stimulated in large measure by the work done by alumni of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB), following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Creating what has been dubbed the “Berlin School,” filmmakers such as Maren Ade (Everyone Else, 2009),Thomas Arslan (Gold, 2013), Valeska Grisebach (Longing, 2006), and above all, Christian Petzold (Barbara, 2012), have produced an emotionally textured and psychologically nuanced indie art cinema that is most recognizable, perhaps, for its shared preferences for understatement and reserve.

Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen, 2013), the remarkably assured comic first feature from the Swiss-born DFFB alumnus, shares this signature quality on the level of performance, in the frequently stoic, dispassionate expressions that the film’s middle-class subjects routinely adopt. However, in Zürcher’s work, this cool surface provides little more than a veneer, a surface reality to which the film’s many outbursts of physical and verbal violence gives lie. The Strange Little Cat on some level suggests the impossibility of suppression: for every act of emotional concealment, Zürcher provides an equal and opposite act of release. Try as though they might, nothing seems to stay entirely inside in this lightly surreal, discomfiting day and the night in the lives of a Berlin family.

Zürcher and cinematographer Alexander Haßkerl’s tightly composed domestic spaces collaborate thematically with The Strange Little Cat’s performances as they suggest a large (heard but not seen) invisible space that remains mostly hidden or concealed from the spectator. The film’s objects, on the other hand, often mimic character outbursts, exploding literally in the projectile bottle cap that smashes an overhead light bulb or metaphorically – and aurally – in the sudden, ear-splitting audio of the coffee grinder. (Sound, it should be said, generates both the film’s extensive off-camera space, and also a number of its more effective – and very wry – gags.)

Crucially, both of the above objects have concrete ties to the film’s characters. The exploding bottle cap, for instance, is modeled after and echoes the sudden acts of violence to which the woman who fills the bottle, Jenny Schily’s lonely and isolated mother character, is prone. She is the Jeanne Dielman (1975), to reference the domestic heroine at the center of Chantal Akerman’s modernist feminist masterpiece, in the midst of Zürcher’s gag-filled, Tatiesque sea of living objects (see French comedian Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, 1958). The grinder’s sharp volume, by comparison, will serve as a prompt or excuse for her youngest daughter and narrative antipode Clara (Mia Kasalo) to scream at the top of her lungs – an act that serves, more broadly, to equate the characters’ inner lives with the objects that the film animates.

Inside becomes outside, in other words, as the characters’ emotional lives find expression in the behavior of objects – again much like the films of the great French actor-director. To put it another way, Zürcher’s low-budget debut is an accomplished piece of cinematic expressionism. It is a conceptually ambitious new work of modernist art cinema that instantly ranks among the greater achievements of the more indie-minded Berlin School. Where is cinema in 2014? It’s in a nondescript Berlin flat where a first-time filmmaker miraculously has made everyday objects come alive. In the words of The Dissolve’s Mike D’Angelo, The Strange Little Cat is that “rare film that offers a new way of looking at the everyday world.”

bird-people_592x299

Cinema remains ever the property of France and Paris in particular, with 2014 yielding another strong slate of popular and more experimental art-minded film (see September OKCMOA Film premiere Jealousy, 2013, for one rich, recent example). This weekend witnesses the local release of an especially entrancing, Parisian-set English and French-language mash-up of mid-life melodrama and classic fairy tale, Bird People (Pascale Ferran, 2014), which Grantland’s Wesley Morris called “the most inspired thing I’ve seen [at Cannes].” Being, however, that Bird People is that almost quintessential example of a film about which the less said the better, let me close here except to say that it includes a second-part, digital coup de cinema – a sudden, dramatic turn – that defies easy technical explanation. Indeed, once the shock of the storytelling shift dissipates, the spectator will be left to wonder of the director, how did she do that? As Morris speculates, this might not only be a work of the digital era, but of the drone age too.

Explore

Plan Your
Visit Now

Loading...
Go to page

Dale Chihuly: Magic & Light is Closed

Chihuly Glass Will Return! Dale Chihuly: Magic & Light is now closed. Check out our current exhibitions and learn more about the new Chihuly reinstallation, Chihuly Then and Now: The Collection at Twenty, opening in June 2022.

Loading...
Go to page
Currently On View

Current Exhibitions

View our open exhibitions at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. From delicate glass pieces to painted portraits and hand-carved statues, we have everything you are interested in.

Loading...
Two women looking at bright colored floral arrangments.
Go to page
Upcoming

Calendar

From film screenings to fundraisers to community events, there's always something exciting happening at OKCMOA.

Store

Shop Now

Adler Torino Bar lifestyle

Creative Gifts

Person holding brightly colored bag

Chihuly Art

Phaidon multi book image

Books & Collectibles

Instagram Created with Lunacy Facebook Created with Lunacy Twitter Created with Lunacy
Search
OKC MOA logo

415 Couch Drive
Oklahoma City, OK 73102

405.236.3100
Hours
Wednesday- Thursday:11 am-5 pm
Friday:11 am-8 pm
Saturday:10 am-5 pm
Sunday:12-5 pm

Closed: Monday, Tuesday, and Major Holidays (New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day)

  • Visit
  • Art
  • Film
  • Store
  • Private Events

Support

  • Season Sponsors
  • Fundraisers

Community

  • Moderns
  • Film Society
  • Outreach
  • Membership
  • Corporate Partnership

About

  • Departments
  • Contact
  • Annual Reports
  • History
  • Careers

Programs

  • Families
  • Educators
  • Adults
  • Outreach

News

  • Press
  • Blog
  • Films Blog

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK, 73102, http://www.okcmoa.com. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, Oklahoma City, OK, 73102, http://www.okcmoa.com. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

© Copyright OKCMOA

  • Visit
  • Art
  • Film
  • Shop
Menu
  • Visit
  • Art
  • Film
  • Shop
  • Get Tickets
  • Become a Member
  • Donate
Menu
  • Get Tickets
  • Become a Member
  • Donate
  • Calendar
  • Learn & Engage
  • FAQs
  • About
  • Support OKCMOA
  • Press
Menu
  • Calendar
  • Learn & Engage
  • FAQs
  • About
  • Support OKCMOA
  • Press
Instagram Created with Lunacy Facebook Created with Lunacy Twitter Created with Lunacy
Museum and Store Hours

Wednesday- Thursday:11 am-5 pm
Friday:11 am-8 pm
Saturday:10 am-5 pm
Sunday:12-5 pm

Closed: Monday, Tuesday, and Major Holidays (New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day)

Location

415 Couch Drive
Oklahoma City, OK 73102

Cafe Hours

Centre Bistro is closed. Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter for more information.

Film Admission
$5Film Society
$6Members
Military
Adult Groups of 15+
Children (5 & under)
$8Seniors (62+)
School Tours
College Students
Teens (13-18)
$10Adults
Museum Admission
FREE

Members
Children 17 & Under

$12Adults
$10Seniors (62+)
College Students
$5Military
Tours
Free

P-12th Grade School Groups

Children 17 and younger

$7/personAdults (10 or more)
$6.50/personSeniors (10 or more)
$3/person

College Students (10 or more)

Contact Us

(405) 236-3100

Instagram Created with Lunacy Facebook Created with Lunacy Twitter Created with Lunacy

Visit

Art

Exhibitions

Collection

Film

Virtual Cinema

Upcoming Screenings

Store

Cafe

Tickets

Membership

Donate

Calendar

Learn & Engage

Families

Private Events

Learn

  • Families
  • Educators
  • Adults
  • Accessibility
  • Virtual Field Trips

About

  • Departments
  • Contact
  • Annual Reports
  • History
  • Careers

Support

  • Season Sponsors
  • Fundraisers

Follow

  • Museum Blog
  • Museum Films Blog

Community

  • Moderns
  • Film Society
  • Outreach
  • Membership
  • Corporate Partnership

Press

  • Press
  • Artworks
  • Collections
  • Films
  • Events
  • Blog Posts

Admission

Currently on View

Dale Chihuly: Magic & Light is CLOSED.

Loading...
Loading...

From the Golden Age to the Moving Image

The Perfect Shot

Perception and Technique in Abstract Art

CALENDAR

General

Free

  • Members
  • Children (17 & Under)

$11.95 + tax

  • Adults

$9.95 + tax

  • Seniors (62+)
  • College Students

Free

  • Military
BUY TICKETS

Tours

(Per Person)

Free

  • p-12th Grade School Groups
    Children 17 and younger

$7
/person

  • Adults (10 or More)

$6.50
/person

  • Senior Tours
    (10 or More)

$3
/person

  • College Students (10 or more)

PLUS TAX

Schedule Tour

Film

Now Playing

Loading...
May 2, 2022
- May 31, 2022
Go to page

Museum Films in May 2022

View All Showtimes
FILM Tickets

Film Admission

$5

  • Film Society

$6

  • Military
  • Members
  • Adult groups of 15+ people
  • Children (12 and under)

$8

  • Seniors (62+)
  • School Tours
  • College Students
  • Teens (13-18)

$10

  • Adults

PLUS TAX

Current Screenings

Upcoming Screenings

Virtual Cinema