Ratcatcher

I know you don't get many comments on here like mine but there is actually a kid in this film who is based on me. When i was little, other kids said i tied a mouse to a balloon and sent it to the moon, although it didn't really happen and the other kids were just twisting things for me, this is where lynne ramsay got the idea for the kid in the film who does the same, i knew lynne well, her brother james, who acts in the film was my very first friend as a small child at school, we grew up together though drifted apart. i don't just like this film, i adore it, it brings back memories for me personally. thank you lynne, and if anyone wants to contact me try my email, it is dostoevsky75@hotmail.com thanks x

There are moments in Lynne Ramsey's "Ratcatcher" that are powerful and affecting--the opening death/murder scene, the moments that follow; James' trip to his future house, his exhuberant play in the field behind. The actors, especially the kids, are convincing, offer very sophisticated, if one dimensional, performances. Ramsey is talented at creating interesting, compelling images--the opening shot; the mouse tied to the balloon and his/her flight into space and crawling on the moon; James trip to his new house. She has a real talent for suggesting activity without showing it--witness the scenes where the boys terrorize Margaret Anne. We never actually see what they do to her, which makes the scenes much more compelling and disturbing. It's almost as if she's telling us that what they are doing to her is too ugly for our eyes. Her use of "off-screen" space is remarkable. Her cutting is interesting. The opening death/murder scene is cut so abruptly with significant gaps of time missing that it properly mimics the way in which the human mind absorbs and experiences traumatic moments. She captures the confusion and shock and horror of the moment. So, there is a lot of promise in Ramsey as a filmmaker, yet, "Ratcatcher" would probably have been better as a 40 minute short than a 90 minute feature. This slight story, which has barely any narrative progression or momentum, is slow, dull, and repetitive. It's running time weakens, does not strengthen, the film's impact. Maybe this is understandable considering that this is Ramsey's first feature length film. I think she's still adjusting to a longer story form. She's still thinking in short film terms. Having said that, I think she has an interesting style that, given stronger scripts, could lead to much more satisfying films.

Contrary to some of the other user comments, which try to compare Ramsay to Loach, Tarkovsky, Bresson (though she cites these men as influences) I found Ratcatcher to stand on its own, and have a distinct style unto itself. The narrative seemlessly shifts from fantasy to reality, a characteristic of Ramsay's short films as well. To reduce Ramsay to a filmmaker only dealing with social realism misses the entire point of her film, which is to reconstruct a narrative as it would appear to a young boy plagued with guilt over his involvement with the death of a friend. Ratcatcher soars to levels of the fantastic world some remember from childhood (though not in a sentamental ridiculous way), transcending the stasis of her influences, who were concerned primarily with reality. Her films are not psycho-drama, they are composed in the "slice-of-life" style of some early new wave French Films, but that comparison is limited. If you liked Pixote, George Washington, 400 Blows, Los Olvidados, see their counterpart, it's that good. One of the best films about children you'll ever see.

I recently saw this movie & found it quite powerful. The acting was very good, especially the young boy playing the lead. Everything was very realistic, probably more than I would have wanted to see. I guess foreign art films show a lot more skin & shocking scenes than do American movies. Regardless, I found the movie very interesting & did enjoy it to a degree. But I do think I would have trouble recommending it to some of my friends.

This is the most beguiling British film about childhood since Kes (1969), a slowburning look at days in the life of a small boy on the brink of adolescence. He has adolescent encounters, including an uneasy bath with an unpopular older girl, but he's very much a pre-adolescent child, with all the helplessness and vulnerability that that means. Lynne Ramsay's great strength as a filmmaker is an ability to recreate the world as seen through her characters' eyes. From with the deprivation, the film is set on a housing estate during a binman's strike, she finds moments of real beauty - a joyfully filmed tumble in a hayfield - and strikingly surreal moments, such as a backward boy's pet mouse flying to the moon on a balloon. If Ratcatcher has a forerunner, excepting Ramsay's own award-winning shorts, it is not The Bill Douglas Trilogy, a semi-still life of a Scottish slum boy, which it eclipses completely, but the great hand-crafted films of Lindsay Anderson: This Sporting Life; If..., and O Lucky Man!

All the praise heaped on this film puzzles me. I found the cinematography to be beautiful, but the storyline, once established, droned on and on with no end in sight. That might have been the point, however. One positive is although it contains the stereotypical drunk father, at least he wasn't physically abusive. You are left with a general sense of pity for many of the characters, but the mood is passive. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be appalled by the poverty or accepting of it. I think the director failed to connect the characters, and in turn kept the audience from connecting. The ending was a leaden mishmash of fantasy and overt symbolism. Not recommended. I understand that this film is semi-biographical, but I felt left out in the cold.

source: Ratcatcher

Trailer—Ratcatcher

Ratcatcher

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...