Wagahai wa neko de aru

A small cat wanders into a household and is the witness to the snobbery and preoccupations of a teacher's household and its interactions with the nouveau riche neighbors.

My notes indicate this was based on a popular novel by Soseki Natsume. In the movie, the cat is the inadvertent and uncomprehending observer of the petty rivalries of the neighborhood. Unfortunately for me, this results in a rather incoherent movie, in no small part because I am unfamiliar with the societal assumptions of the era. Everyone seems a bit self-obsessed, despite occasional references to the First World War; the cat turns up at odd moments on screen, and at other times, it offers its thoughts on issues that have nothing to do with the human drama going on; whether this is a statement of the unimportance of such things -- from a cat's viewpoint anyway -- seems unclear. The result is rambling and a bit dull.