Ratcatcher

Who are these people saying that RATCATCHER is "pretentious art-house crap" ?? I suppose what they want is just good IL' downhome Hollywood swill? Don't they pay any attention at all to things like lovely cinematography, fine writing, and careful pacing? RATCATCHER is a beautiful movie, though hard to watch because of the desperate conditions of its main characters. It's full of worrisome situations and a complicated storyline that sticks with you for days. It has qualities of both compression and mystery, much like well-crafted poetry has compared to prose. Don't believe the whiners about this movie - it's NOT pretentious, it's inclusive and generous, and though it doesn't provide us with an easy let's-have-popcorn-and-watch-Schwarzenegger-blow-things-up kind of entertainment, it's well-crafted, well-written, beautifully shot, and worth watching and thinking about.

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.

I saw this movie recently at a special Student premiere in Leicester Square in London. I'd read a few reviews from various magazines about the movie and its lack of Narrative structure, but from watching the first 5 minutes, I knew this was something special. This has to be one of the most powerful British Movies ever made. The acting is superb, the whole cast is brilliant especially the children. Lynn Ramsey directs her feature debut with confidence and professional ability, and the result is stunning. The Narrative does give way slightly after the "accident" and the movie seems to forget about that fateful day on the canal, it seems to drift a little, but this, as I found out afterwards was on purpose. The movie was originally envisaged as 20 short stories which came into one, and it was also designed so the audience would always have this event in the back of their minds throughout the movie and whenever something relevant happened you were instantly reminded of it. Their are a few minor controversial scenes in the movie which some members of the audience did not agree with and others simply laughed off - I was not bothered about the main controversial scene but could see and hear that some people were offended. The setting of Glasgow in the late 1970s is well represented, and set around the dustbin men strike of '76. The atmosphere of living in a disease ridden place like this with rubbish piling up on every corner is almost tangible. The balance between bleakness and humour is never crossed too far either side. The subject matter is very depressing and humour was therefore injected in places (such as the rat on the moon sequence) to lighten up the audience and not have them leaving the cinema depressed.

This movie is a real stunner, don't be fooled by reviews and magazines saying otherwise go and see this movie at the first possible chance. You will not be disappointed.

I attended the screening of Ratcatcher in Glasgow as part of the Edinburgh Film festival where it was very warmly received. At times it is not an easy film to watch but it is hard not to relate to the struggle of the young boy at the centre of the story as he tries to make sense of his situation and to dream of an escape from squalor. The incident at the heart of the story and it's impact on the boy is developed in an understated way while never leaving you in doubt about it's devastating effect. The non-professional cast are uniformly excellent, particularly the boy playing the main character, and the film always feels rooted in the real lives of real people continually up against it. The humour and casual violence have considerable impact by being used sparingly and there are moments of great tenderness, particularly between the boy and an abused girl in his street. The film is set in Govan during the binmen's strike of the late seventies and it looks quite bleak yet the colours are deep and rich. This is a serious film with real depth and an exceptionally promising debut from Lynne Ramsey.

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.