Gasman

Gasman is a proper short film - little plot, none of it told explicitly, but a larger story going on around the camera. Like most of Lynne Ramsey's stuff (Ratcatcher being the best and most enjoyable example, because it isn't a short)it feels like and probably is 1970s/80s East-end Glasgow, the struggling classes and a fairly grim outlook, but you see the little sparks of interest in real lives, and being a small story told very much from a child's point of view, it's much more hopeful, interesting and happy than it could have been. The characters, so few, and so little seen in the short still have immense believability and completeness. Most people will find this dull, but if you're the kind of person who knows how to get hold of a copy, you're probably the type of person who'd enjoy it. Arty, but not impenetrable, simple but thought-provoking.

Many families have some kinds of secrets which are usually hidden by parents,and the important problem is that how parents explain their secrets to their children.If these secrets are not well explained to children,children cannot have complete trust in their parents.In that movie,Lynne must have not only envied another girl but also doubted her father.I wonder why the father could not explain to his daughter about another daughter.Maybe it's because he did not want to hurt his daughter's feeling by telling the truth.It's a shocking fact,but his father should have told her daughter the truth so as not to lose his daughter's trust.Relationships of mutual trust between parents and children are more important than any other things.

"Gasman" is a short film which is about a girl's life changing point. One day, the girl goes out with her father and her brother, and she meets a little girl who looks very similar to her. I like this film's introduction. In the house, the girl polishes her shoes and puts her cute dress on. Her mother cares about the girl, and the boy plays with his toy car. We can't understand why she polishes her shoes and wears a dress, so we can guess the destination. And it makes us very excited. The last scene is also one that I like. We can consider her feeling and her thoughts from now on as we like. This film is not bright, but I think this film has something attractive. When you finish watching this film, you may bask in the afterglow of this film. I don't like thisk ind of dark film usually, but this movie is interesting. So, if you like dark films, you should watch it, and even if you don't like dark films, you should try to watch it.

It's grim up north the old saying goes; Gasman by Lynne Ramsey won't change that stereotype but it does illustrate the talent of this director. This short film shares similarities with the both work of Mike Leigh and social realist 'kitchen sink' films of the sixties, in showing a slice of life story from the lower classes. Read; bleak setting and diegetic sound.

Set in an undisclosed Scottish city at Christmas, the story concerns a day in the life of lower class father (James Ramsey), daughter Lynne (Lynne Ramsey Jr) and son Steven (Martin Anderson) as they walk the tracks. En route, they mysteriously pick up more children from a woman (Jackie Quinn), Lisa (Lisa Taylor) and Robert (Robert McEwan).

Gasman is a powerful piece, due in no small part to the performance by Lynne Ramsey Jr. It is a powerful portrait of a working class young girl and the confusion she faces. When pretending to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, you really believe that 'There's no place like home.' The supporting cast are also suitably bedraggled for their characters to be believable. There are some fine visual flourishes in this short piece; the close shots of people getting ready for their day out give the film a very intimate feel, as if you are really looking into their family life. There is appropriate use of light and dark contrast, in particular as they are in wide shot walking up the tracks. Also, the working club Christmas party is visual delight, with child POV shots, slow motion and chopped up editing.

At times the Scottish dialect is quite hard to follow with the sound quality being quite raw. My main issue with the film would be that Gasman doesn't have anything original to say. Gasman is suitably bleak according to genre convention but its essential message being that it's challenging growing up in a lower class environment has been a mainstay of social realist cinema since before Kes. Still grim it would seem.

I've never been a fan of short films for their 'art-school' and 'experimental' qualities. Simply being a product of those two is not enough. They are almost always too personal, too opaque, and too much obviously serving as 'stepping-stones'.

I was therefore happy to see Lynne Ramsay's short films as the chrysalis for her superb feature films. I was also impressed to learn that she won the Cannes short-film prize, *twice*. And now I can see what others saw in her, for _Gasman_ is the best short film I have ever seen.

Available on the Criterion DVD with _Small Deaths_ and the less good _Kill the Day_, _Gasman_ is a fully-fledged, visionary film that translates directly into the skill and grace of _Ratcatcher_.

_Gasman_ moves directly from the first piece of _Short Deaths_, with the distant father and Lynne Ramsay Jr. again taking centre screen. But _Gasman_ comes to a kind a fruition--a full story with many of the same themes and techniques of _Ratcatcher_: closely observed yet elliptical human behaviour, housing projects, slum-beauty, children's natures, a jumbled impressionistic world caught in partial body closeups and shots from behind people.

The film 'tells' nothing, but the story is dead clear and builds slowly to an emotional pitch that is almost unbearable.

This is a film of jaw-dropping beauty. Sounds trite, but that's how I feel. When the Da and two kids walk on the tracks, the camera is set to a partially closed iris which intensifies the available light and colour in an otherworldly sheen--one that is gone when they return on the same tracks at night, in disappointment. Beauty in service of story is the key.

This *is* the best short film I have ever seen.