Ratcatcher

Dir: Lynne Ramsay

1999

*****

Everything that was great about Lynne Ramsay’s short films is amplified in her debut feature. I’ve seen so many short films and thought to myself “Someone give that director a heap of money” only to be disappointed when they do. By 1999 Ramsay had gained a following and a reputation, Ratcatcher was clearly produced by people who knew to let her have full control and make it without compromise. Much like her previous films, Ratcatcher is stark and disconnected. It feels almost dreamlike in its hazy realism. The film is set in Glasgow in the early 1970s. The city, despite its Victorian grandeur, has some areas with the poorest housing conditions in western Europe, such as no running hot water, no bathing facilities, and no indoor toilets. The city is midway through a major re-development program, demolishing housing schemes and re-housing the tenants in new modern estates. The problems in these schemes are somewhat compounded by the binmen going on strike, creating an additional health hazard and a breeding ground for rats. The main character, James, is a 12-year-old boy, growing up in one of these schemes, which is gradually emptying as the re-housed tenants move out. James, with the rest of his family, (two sisters, one older, one younger, his mum and heavy-drinking father), patiently wait to be re-housed. The film begins with James’s friend Ryan as he is forced to put on his wellington boots to go visit his father in prison. Ryan runs off instead while his mother isn’t looking and joins James who is playing near the canal. The friends are close and partake in some rough play that leads to Ryan falling into the canal. The tone of the film is set when Ryan, unable to climb out, drowns in the canal. James bears much of the blame for not having raised the alarm but he believes his inaction has gone unnoticed. James’s grief and guilt is the skeleton of the film, we feel his pain through his quiet internal suffering – which makes for uncomfortable viewing at times. Ryan's family is eventually re-housed and on the day of leaving, and when Ryan's mother gives James the pair of brown sandals that she'd bought for Ryan on the day of his death, it is like being punched in the heart. James' one escape comes when he takes a bus to the end of the line and ends up in the outskirts of the city, where a new housing estate is under construction. He explores the half-built houses, and wonders in awe at the view from the kitchen window: an expansive field of wheat, blowing in the wind and reaching to the horizon. In a scene central to the film, he climbs through the window and escapes into the blissful freedom of the field. His freedom is literal and symbolic, he wants to be free of his living situation as well as his mental torment. James befriends a girl, Margaret Anne, who he tries to help after her glasses are thrown into the canal by the local gang. James and Margaret Anne become close friends. She is his only other relief from his home environment. Margaret Anne has problems of her own, and one of them is allowing herself to be abused by the local gang. The duo find comfort in each other's company. In one of the films most startling scenes, one of James' friends, Kenny, receives a pet mouse as a birthday present. After the gang throw the mouse around in the air to make him "fly", Kenny ties the mouse's tail to a balloon, and in the most unexpected moments I’ve ever experienced in a film, the film shows it floating to the moon. The mouse then joins a whole colony of other mice frolicking on the moon, in a surreal dream-like fantasy that is nothing like Ramsay’s previous work, or indeed the film up to that point. It comes from nowhere and it is beautiful. Kenny later falls in the canal and is rescued by James' father, making him briefly into a local hero. Though the military eventually comes and cleans up all the garbage in the neighbourhood, James realizes that his situation will most likely never change. He plunges himself into the canal, and a brief scene is shown, in which James' family is moving into a new neighbourhood without him. It’s this stark realisation that brings the film back down to earth after the excitement of fantasy. There are moments of hope and wonder but fact remains that life is stark and brutal and James’s life is set out in front of him. William Eadie is brilliant as James Gillespie, a non-actor directed perfectly by one of the best directors working today. It’s a near perfect film all round, everything fans wanted from a feature-length Ramsay film and so much more. To balance gritty realism and almost absurdist fantasy so beautifully takes a great talent and a visionary story teller. I just wish Ramsay would direct more films that are written by her, although she continues to improve her adaptations with her own input. It’s one of the last great films of the twentieth century.