An overwrought, chest-thumping score is surplus to requirements in a film that already feels as though everything, from the characters to the walls of the cells, is sodden with panic sweats. Serial killer Carlton Gary escaped from a low-security prison by sawing through the bars of his cell. A pacy screenplay, co-written by director Francis Annan and adapted from a book by Jenkin, rarely flags, but it’s the nervy camera, hugging the characters at hip height, the better to scrutinise each locked barrier to freedom, that most successfully builds the tension. Later on 15 March 1983, Gary escaped again from police custody. The brainchild of writer-director Masanori Hata, The Adventures of Milo and Otis debuted in Japan as Koneko Monogatari ( A Kitten’s Story) during the summer of 1986. Featuring limited narration interspersed with occasional poetry and a beautiful soundtrack by Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, the film took four years and more than 40 hours of footage to craft in its original form. Also called The Adventures of Chatran, the film centered on a tabby kitten, Chatran (pronounced “Sha-toh-ran”), and his puppy pal, a Pug named Pusuke (pronounced “Poos-kay”). Rescripted by Mark Saltzman, heavily edited, given a new soundtrack, and with redubbed narration by English actor Dudley Moore, the film was released in America as The Adventures of Milo and Otis in August of 1989. Where the original version was largely quiet, meditative, and yet unflinching in terms of the struggles and challenges the young cat and Pug puppy faced in the wild, the English-language version is boisterous, joyful, and chatty. In the words of Dan Crow’s folksy, cheery theme song, “We’re gonna take a walk outside today,” or at least down memory lane, and “see what we can find” in the incredible world of Milo and Otis. The Adventures of Milo and Otis starts out as a frenetic, rambunctious movie about innocence, exploration, and friendship. We are thrust into the story with the birth of Milo, a tiny orange kitten living on a busy but well-ordered farm. Taking his first tentative, if already mischievous, steps outside of the barn loft where he was whelped, Milo meets Otis, a baby Pug. Once Milo is provisionally satisfied that Otis is not, in fact, a cat, the two agrarian urchins become fast friends. Immediately inseparable, Milo and Otis wrestle, tend a chicken egg, and learn to navigate the boundaries of their bucolic world. Just when the pair are most comfortable and content, a game of hide and seek goes awry and Milo drifts downriver in a box. Expressing instincts of pure love and selfless affection, Otis sets off in search of his best friend. After providing a midstream defense of Milo from a bear, Otis does not see his friend again for half the film’s running time. Their reunion is short-lived, however, as not even four minutes later, Milo meets Joyce, a lady cat, and falls in love. As fall turns to winter, and Otis feels increasingly alone, we’re reminded, not only of the rapid maturation of cats and dogs, but also of the all-too familiar and mutable nature of friendship itself. Milo and Otis’ adventures seem to take place over the course of a single year, spanning a remarkable variety of landscapes and environments. This is nothing less than an enchanted fantasy world, like J.R.R. It is the world of quest romance following the river away from the safety of the farm, Milo and Otis’s voyages take them through forest and fen, to the desert and the ocean, within sight of the mountain foothills and into the broad plains. Together and by themselves, Milo and Otis encounter beasts large and small, familiar and outlandish.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |