Ratcatcher (2021)

After watching my third Lynne Ramsay film, I really enjoy her minimalist style (though it can make it harder to follow), and she just has amazing endings. Ratcatcher, much like Morvern Callar, is light in dialogue and mostly about showing who the main character is through their actions and reactions to others. The accents in both can make it hard to tell what they're saying, and the minimalism can make them seem boring or confusing, as it's easy to miss a key event. However, the subject matters in both are well tackled. Ratcatcher does two things better than Morvern Callar: in addition to characterization, it also thematically considers the setting in a valuable way. The demonstration of 1973 Scotland, which can be extended to run down, poverty stricken areas in general, is poignant and gives a true sense of the hopelessness families feel. The other thing it does better is the ending - I thought Morvern Callar had a very good ending, but Ratcatcher's ending absolutely blew me away. The use of the canal as his drowning place, with his initial guilt coming full circle was powerful. The contrasting shots of him leaving the window midway through the movie and being unable to get in at the end were excellently juxtaposed, but the family then moving into that house and actually leaving rundown Glasgow for his happy, escape house was truly devastating. It felt confusing and like a slog at points, but it's about appreciating the quiet beauty of each scene and the ending was really just exceptional to me. I am now very excited for You Were Never Really Here.

Ratcatcher is a beautiful film set in the less aesthetically pleasing back drop drop of the Glasgow tenement blocks of the nineteen seventies. It's a story about childhood, tragedy and an unutterable struggle against circumstance and surrounding before your life has barely begun. This is not a film that roars though, on the contrary it is a very quiet piece with a wistful message. Lynne Ramsey's directorial approach is seemingly non-obtrusive, capturing a naturalism of the child actors that some film makers could only dream of. There are moments that are incredibly bleak, but a melancholic tenderness prevails. The dream like quality as main protagonist James escapes his rat-infested urban home and escapes to the countryside are some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed on film. As he runs out into golden fields, encompassing a little boy who is holding onto his childhood with fingertips...

Ratcatcher utterly surprised me. Not because of the talking, which I hardly understood at all (I'm Austrian), but because of the surprising scarcity of dialogues. I doubt that there was a single situation where any of the protagonists talked for more than five seconds in a row. That's why the movie wasn't that difficult to grasp, as most of the plot was primarily carried by images and stunning shots of William Eadie's character. I guess that there were minutes where no-one actually said a word for a long time - which makes this movie maybe the movie with the least words spoken I've ever seen. Concerning its plot - it's very much reminiscent of Kes. You get a first-hand insight into the bleak and dull existence those kids in Glasgow have to endure. James is suffering from thorough disillusion. The sequences when you actually see him smile - which are two or three maybe - are thus real highlights of the movie. He is the one who bears the emotional burden of the movie. I particularly liked the scene when he was lying on the sofa and his young sister places herself next to him. The other highlight was when he took the bus and found this solitary house and the grain field, where he experienced some kind of relief from his tough life. The ending was ambiguous. I suppose he actually did drown himself - and the last image show his dreams of his family moving away from their bleak existence towards a brighter future - a future he thinks is only possible without him. Just think of the young girl holding the Miro towards the sky - and then you see James' face. And you see him drown again right when the credits start.

The demolition of the Glasgow tenements marked the end of one chapter in the story of poverty in that city; and sadly, the start of another one, as the bleak new schemes that replaced them soon fell into their own downward cycle. Lynne Ramsay's film, 'Ratcatcher', is an utterly unsentimental portrait of those times, though imbued with a measure of hope that only hindsight proves false. As a chronicler of Britain's working classes, Ramsay's style falls somewhere between the realism of Ken Loach and the artistry of Terrence Davies, although arguably lacking the warmth of either. Moreover, at times 'Ratcatcher' seems stylistically overloaded for no particular purpose (the strange fantasy scene with the mouse, for example, seems out of place in the rest of the movie), while when the film gets it right (such as in the opening scenes, which are almost unwatchably harrowing), it's still unclear for what higher aim Ramsay is putting her audience through the emotional wringer. Perhaps if the film was a little less "arty", more conventionally narrative-driven, and with more obvious sympathy, it might actually be more enjoyable to watch. On the other hand, most films which attempt to offer these conventional virtues end up formulaic, sterile and empty, whereas Ramsay's film is raw and in places very powerful. Taking this film together with 'Morvern Callar', her second feature, my feeling is that Ramsay is a director of considerable talent, but maybe still trying, in this early phase of her career, a little too hard. 'Ratcatcher' is not a great film; but hopefully hints at a great one to come.