Mubi Monday: Ratcatcher (1999)

Having seen three other features from Lynne Ramsay, and not being at all disappointed by any of them (although it took me a rewatch of We Need To Talk About Kevin to fully appreciate), I was excited to finally watch this one, her feature debut.

Set in 1970s Glasgow, Ratcatcher allows us to tag along with a young boy named James (William Eadie). There are piles of physical rubbish stacking up around the estate he lives on, due to a strike by the refuse collectors, and piles of psychological litter starting to weigh more and more heavily on his mind. Sometimes seeming comfortable in the company of others close to his age, sometimes seeming to want to get as far away from everyone as possible, James interacts with, and learns from, a variety of characters, from his parents (a father who likes to drink a lot, played by Tommy Flanagan, and a mother trying to do her best for the family, played by Mandy Matthews) to a teenage lass named Margaret Anne (Leanne Mullen).

Ramsay has a way of making her films look interesting and muddily beautiful, even while characters are being thoroughly dragged through the mud. I think this comes from her unwavering ability to always ground her characters in a world that is either seriously affecting them or being seriously affected by them. There's almost a symbiotic relationship between the characters she creates and the reality she puts them in. Here we get those piles of rubbish, we get a lot of shots alongside a canal, and we get homes that aren't very well looked after. Sometimes these environments are playgrounds for James, sometimes they're much worse. You don't need to put bars on the windows to imprison people who are already so unable to climb a ladder weighted down by their place in society, their family, and who they befriend during their childhood years.

Eadie, in his only feature performance (to date), is very good. He's natural and realistic onscreen, keeping a lot of things hidden below the surface, as every young boy does. Mullen is equally good, her character being someone who is trying to navigate safely through a world of boys that she has already found can be easily placated when they're thinking about sex. Flanagan and Matthews are important, as parents (good or bad) always are, and they cast shadows over a number of scenes, despite their actual screentime being relatively limited. I'll also mention young John Miller, who plays a boy named Kenny. Kenny is the most childish character shown here, and easily led astray (which reminds James of how easily his path could change), and Miller is a good fit for the role.

You might be upset by the scenes that involve rodents, and you definitely need to be in the right mood to take in the fairly dour tone (although there IS lightness and humour here and there, in small amounts), but you should definitely check this out. As you should check out every film from Ramsay, who is arguably the best female writer-director working today, and far too often forgotten in conversations that cover the very few names that people tend to remember ahead of her. Watch this movie, watch all of her movies, and start bringing her up in more film conversations.

8/10

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