Rat

Franz Kafka blends well with Jim Henson - who would've thought!?

Rat loosely follows Kafka's Metamorphosis and turns it upside down into a comedic gem.

What I found to be the most interesting about this movie is the different family members reactions to Hubert as a rat. Each one reacts differently and Conchita (wife) exhibits an almost bipolar feel as her mood swings violently depending on many variables (whether or not Hubert is around, what Hubert does, etc. versus her tough and unfair love toward her husband).

Amidst the chaos of boarding a human/rat, the family, who once had very indifferent feelings toward Hubert, start to really show their love. It's a great movies that explores a number of emotions from greed to love and even hatred.

My vote: 9 out of 10

Rat

Hubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite) has had a hard day on his bread delivery round. and so, stops off for a pint on the way home to Kimmage – to wife Conchita (Imelda Staunton), daughter Marietta (Kerry Condon) and his saintly son Pius (Andrew Lovern). Inevitably one pint becomes a ‘few'. He's also under the weather. Daisy Farrell's (Veronica Duffy) expert diagnosis from the snug is Asiatic flu. Back home, with Conchita giving him some of her mind, Hubert wants only to go to bed. But Hubert hasn't the flu. There he metamorphoses into a rat.

Initially normality reigns in the Flynn household in this freak circumstance of Hubert as rat. He's a bit picky about his food and the family unsure of rat habits, but widely read Uncle Matt (Frank Kelly) proves expert on all things rodent.

But journalist Phelim Spratt (David Wilmot) worms his way into the home with a plan for a book, a film, a book of the film … However the satanic entrepreneurial approach is a Pandora's box and sets the film off in glorious chase of the punchline.

Wesley Burrows' screenplay is in the tradition of the farce – a comic creation built around exaggeration of character and event, extremes of personality and occasion; soaked in satire and nonsense; action-driven, leading to the climactic joke that is the point of the piece.

But the punchline is not the whole point. Farce should also have a point of view. Without unveiling the joke, how ought we to respond to ‘freaks', ‘aliens in our midst'? Burn them? Expel them? Exploit them? Accept them?

Director Steve Barron and his cast carry off Burrows' farce with verve (with Imelda Stauntion in splendid form) according to the rules of the genre – including hilariously developing the moral debates.

When the father of a Dublin family is transformed into a rat, the family dynamic changes not at all! The daughter is still Daddy's Little Girl, the son -- Pius! -- is piously creepy, his vocation to the priesthood notwithstanding, and the mother alternates (as usual) between wild-eyed outrage and sentimental tears. Writer, director and cast all seem to be making the same movie -- a dissection of some of the more peculiar aspects of the Irish "character" with some of the insight of Huston's/Joyce's THE DEAD -- and even more laughs. Imelda Staunton is devastatingly funny as the mother who views her husband's transformation as just the latest in a series of crosses she's had to bear.

Certainly this movie is not for all tastes, and I can imagine that some viewers would be simply baffled. It helps if you DO understand (sort of) why anyone would name their son "Pius." But if you're Irish-American and have mixed feelings (are there any other kind?) about your "heritage," just sit back and enjoy!

First, "Rat" gets extra points for a very original screenplay. The fine acting is what carries this unique comedy, because the only way "Rat" works is if the characters come across as dead serious, which they do. Any decent into slapstick would have been disastrous. Another plus is the unique camera angles giving a rat's point of view. Different reactions of the various family members, to what is obviously a highly unusual situation, fuels this dark comedy. In order for a black comedy to work, it must be outrageous, not mean spirited, and deadly serious, and "Rat succeeds on all counts. I liked this clever and highly original comedy. - MERK

'Rat' is a charming, funny film that has been getting somewhat overpraised here because films from this country are generally inept, pretentious and/or cliched. 'Rat' is none of these things, and so is a cause for rejoicing, but to use epithets like 'Borgesian' seems inappropriate - the film has few of the philosophical resonances of true Borgesian films like 'Performance', 'The Spider's Strategem', 'Belle de Jour' or even 'Being John Malkovich', to which this film has been mostly compared. We are never shown what the transformation from human to rat has on Hubert's psyche; there are no questions about what it means to be human or its limits.

With the exception of a couple of point-of-view shots necessary to resolve the narrative, the film takes place entirely outside Hubert's experience, focusing instead on his family's reactions, so that it's almost irrelevant that he is a rat. This distances the film somewhat from another source, Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', although both share the emphasis on family reaction. Kafka's fable is a dramatisation of alienation, from identity, body, family, society, epoque even species.

Some eager critics of 'Rat' have seen it as an allegory of racism in latterday Ireland (and it is a very xenophobic society at present), but the links are tenuous - Hubert begins as a confirmed member of his society; any mocking of the family are just that, jibes at the family, just as you'll get in any society based on begrudgery or gossip (although, considering the near-sacred status of the Irish family not so long ago, this is pointed enough).

Before I go on to praise the film - and it is a film, for vision and audacity, that deserves much praise - I just want to mention one more flaw - Wesley Burrowes' excellent script is frequently let down by ponderous direction, which sometimes drags out the script's nimble wit in attempts to be 'deep'.

The thing that surprised me most about 'Rat' was not its modernity or intellectual sophistication, but its recreation of a certain Ireland that is only a generation old, and yet seems as remote as the Famine. It could be set in any time from the 40s to the early 70s - only the blurred clip from 'Eat the Peach' (mid-80s) and the Karaoke machine in the very last scene gives away the setting as any later (yeah, and maybe Marietta's bizarre tights). This is an Ireland mercifully free of mobile phones, go-getting yuppies and strategic planning - this is a world of Johnson Mooney and O'Brien delivery vans, quiet pints in quiet pubs, smelly bookies, young sons who want to be priests, priests who are psychotics and perform exorcisms with what appears to be bondage gear, neighbours trying to openly steal husbands, know-all brothers-in-law who know nothing.

What is modern about the film is the way it captures a particular social phenomenon. With the breaking of old social and religious ties in recent years, there has been a greater personal freedom never experienced in this country. With this liberty, though, has been an increase in selfishness, in general apathy towards anyone else, and the reaction to Hubert brilliantly shows this, the family worried about how it will affect THEM, what people will think of them. Their willingness to kill is chillingly plausible (and mirrors the icy piety of pro-lifers), and maybe this is where the anti-racism comes in, that we're not used to so much prosperity and happiness, that we are violently hostile to anyone who threatens to take it from us.

As an entertainment, 'Rat' is full of good things, the off-centre dialogue, the gloriously silly performances (Niall Toibin's parody of 'the Exorcist' is priceless), the arched-eyebrow situations. There are some lovely visual set-ups, the opening narration which moves from the hackneyed Romantic Irish landscape of American legend to a rat's eye view (on a boat!) of Dublin down the Liffey; the chase of Hubert as he escapes from a pub, finally upending a beer delivery truck; the second chase, the camera swooping back on a sprawling housing estate as chessboard.

The revelation for me, though, was the showbands on the soundtrack. For decades the word 'showband' has been an insult, its dominance during the reactionary era seen as collusive; now we all listen to tedious, serious rock or whatever. But the Brendan Bowyer song that closes the film is remarkable, as huge, celebratory, melancholy and musically exhilarating as early Scott Walker.