捕鼠者1999

本以为James的父亲George成为救人英雄后一家人可以顺利地搬进新家，可救人之后偏偏迎来了检查人员，家中的凌乱及浑身的污泥使搬家的梦想泡汤。

试想George或者说一家人实际上赚到了什么呢，我第一时间想到的只有受颁的奖状与奖章，以及那件免费清洗的西服外套。这很难不让人联想起理想与现实的差距，有时你以为突如其来的“好事”能为理想助燃，不料却将火苗一把掐死。

《捕鼠者》在结尾前始终维持着某种动态平衡关系——于James而言，父亲的责骂、不良少年的欺压都可以与同受欺负的Margarita相互慰藉；幻想住进麦田后的新房也能些许抹平肮脏混乱的居住环境于身心的荼毒。但这就像是一个左右摇摆的天平，本质上是不稳定、不可持续的，因为天平两侧不同的质量终会导致有一侧先落地，以结束这一病态的平衡关系。当James发觉无法拯救“心爱”的Margaret，心底的秘密又被Kenny戳穿，自己也无法进入麦田后的房子时，混乱于James上叠加到了峰值，天平崩塌沉入水底。

This blog post will engage with the main themes in the popular reception of the film Ratcatcher (Ramsay, 1999), using as a sample 25 user reviews and comments from the Chinese review-aggregation website Douban, selected on the basis of their length and complexity.

One of the most frequently encountered opinions, 10 of the reviews that I examined interpreted the film from the perspective of teenagers. They think this film depicts the inner world of a depressed, lonely, and sensitive teenager in a realistic way, and reflects the poverty and unbearable life of working-class life in Britain through the vision of a child. In particular, users write of ‘the growing pains of a teenager at the bottom of the pile’. Most people are saddened by the desperate emotional rendering of the film – a story of a traumatized teenager's confusion and sadness in the face of society and the world. For viewers of Douban, the film has reaped the most accolades for its portrayal of British society. Similarly frequent are views about the director’s shooting technique and cinematography, with users often remarking on Ramsay’s solid work as a photographer, revelling in the close-ups and contrasts between the movements and stillness of the shots in the film’s scene.

The film does reflect the oppression and suffering of the British working class through the eyes of the child, James, and many social contradictions are further revealed through James’s interactions with his family and friends. Although Chinese audiences are immersed in an atmosphere of despair and sadness, in my viewpoint, there is still a sense of redemption and hope in some scenes.

In the Ratcatcher, the story is set in the 1970s during a general strike by rubbish workers in the Glasgow area, where the streets were littered with rubbish, houses were in disrepair and rivers were muddy. Like many films typified by the British Kitchen sink Drama, Ratcatcher exposes the grim characteristics of society. It focuses on the lives of poor communities and the impact of poverty on families, and shows the depression and powerlessness of working-class life (Williams,1977; Higson, 1984). But Ramsey largely rejects institutional context and history, abandoning traditional political drives in favour of a more symbolic, suggestive, obscure narrative (Carlota, 2016). Thus, the Ratcatcher can be seen as a film of poetic realism and viewers can feel its hints of hope and redemption in scenes of despair.

Figure 1: The city streets are full of rubbish

Kenny's Snowball seems to be an amalgamation of destruction and hope. James has to endure the violence of those older than him but also wants to protect this cute little mouse. In the next series of shots, which are James's fantasy, the mouse flies to the moon in a red balloon and joins other mouse companions. This fantasy is also James's longing, which also represents the innocence and hope of children. As Aitken (2011) points out, Ramsey's use of fantasy techniques belies some of the tones of realism and makes surprises to create a form of poetic realism. Because at this point, James hopes to find his true playmate, who will no longer have to endure violence and pain. Just like rats fleeing from the earth, he wants to escape this awful community. Thus, poetically, the Ratcatcher gives the audience a child's perspective of how the underclass grows from the rubbish and how James releases his guilt and pain in his fantasies. James' fantasies seem to escape the mire of life and this moment of innocent simplicity contrasts with the dreary tone of the film, which makes the audience realise that these underclass teenagers still harbour hope, only to slowly fade away in the struggle of reality.

Figure 2: James’ fantasy of Snowball flying to the moon

If the fantasy of a snowball flying to the moon represents the innocence and hope of a child, James in the wheat field has a sense of redemption in the film's desperate and heavy tone. The golden fields of wheat are a stark contrast to the dirty canals and rubbish-strewn city streets, where James can run freely through them without suffering violence or pain. In this poetic scene, James steps through the window and jumps into the wheat field. And at the same time, the cheerful and melodious music brings the audience to the romantic world of the child. Here he fantasizes about having a new house built in a field, which is also James' hope. The Ratcatcher seems to set up a 'paradise' in which the hope of society is rediscovered in the children’s vision.

Figure 3: James in the wheat field

Sadly, at the end of the film, James is unable to cope with the growing pains in a society of inequality and despair, and he chooses to die. However, the scenes immediately following add some imaginative warmth as he and his family arrive in the wheat field carrying belongings with the smile on their face, where their new home has been built. But they are still framed beyond the window, which seems to suggest their isolation from real life. After this scene, there is still a grey scene in which James sinks into the dirty river. This is a combination of landscape and narrative; thus, the dialectic of illusion and disillusionment is carried out, from the good mess into the bad mess (Trotter, 2008). Moreover, this tragic ending seems to hint at the disillusionment of James’s hope, but some pauses in the scenes, such as the pauses in the shot as James sinks and the pause in the running through the wheat field, still give the audience a powerful sense of redemption.

Figure 4: James’s fantasy of moving to a new house

Figure 5: James sinks into the canal

In sum, Ratcatcher is a poetic realist film that places individual confusion and social trauma in the scenes of despair and sadness through the eyes of children. However, the film leaves room for hope and redemption for the children, preserving them between fantasies and camera pauses.

Words: 1013

Reference list:

Aitken, S. C. (2007). Poetic child realism: Scottish film and the construction of childhood. Scottish Geographical Journal, 123 (1), 68-86.

Higson, A. (1984). Space, Place, Spectacle. Screen25 (4/5), 2-21.

Larrea, C. (2016). Ratcatcher. Senses of Cinema, 80, 1–5.

Ramsay, L. (Screenwriter/ Director). (1999). Ratcatcher[Motion picture]. France: Pathé Pictures International

Trotter, D. (2008). Lynne Ramsay’s “Ratcatcher”: Towards a Theory of Haptic Narrative. Paragraph, 31(2), 138–158.

Williams, R. (1977). A Lecture on Realism. Screen18 (1), pp.61-74

In the two short films, it’s very impressive how simple the settings are, especially in SMALL DEATHS. Lynne made a bold choice to put three moments together to make a short film. These are three tiny moments at different stages of a girl’s life. But there’s a cohesion between these moments. As Lynne said in the interview, these are tiny moments when things will never be the same for kids. These kind of tiny moments play big roles in everyone’s childhood, as they influenced how we see the world, what kind of person we will become. It touches the audience in the short because they are so authentic, personal and emotional and people feel connected, even though Lynne cares nothing about rules such as “character’s wants/problems/arc” or “active protagonist”. The short focus only on the three moments, elaborating the moments and simplifying the settings as much as possible. If in a traditional way to tell the story, it would start much earlier to introduce the characters, show informations, back stories, set up conflicts. It shows the director’s confidence to just show what’s really necessary to tell the story. And it works very well.

GASMAN is told in a more traditional way with beginning, middle and end. It’s engaging throughout the whole film, focusing on the kid’s perspective, as the conflict progresses. I like how the conflict peaks at the middle part when the two girls fight for daddy’s knee. Lynn didn’t dramatized the conflict but it feels real and authentic with the two girls’ natural performance. I like the beautiful images in the end when they are on their way home and both the two girls are on daddy’s shoulder, and when the two complicated families walk toward opposite directions on the railway. Everything seems back to normal again but the visual and the girl’s attempt to throw the rock tells so much about the situation and the dynamic under it. I also think the beginning scene when the two kids were asked by their mom to dress at home is a smart way to level the story up, even the story is completed without it. It shows how the family looks like normally before the discovery. It could start when the father and two kids coming out from the house but seeing and getting an idea of the origin family raises the stake when the protagonist girl found that another girl is taking her father away from her. And Lynne’s choice to show the scene partly in the frame is also smart to give the audience just the enough information.

RATCATCHER maintains the subjectivity from kid’s perspective, the use of details. But as a feature film it raises the topic to social problems includes people’s living condition. I think the environment of the neighborhood is built up very efficiently in the movie and becomes a crucial character itself. The main spaces include the polluted river, yard full of black garbages and rats, and the street in front of houses where kids play together. The whole film goes back to these three spaces a lot of times and conflicts happen at these places to show how people’s lives are around and influenced by these pollution, garbages and rats. The only other space shown in the movie is the newly built houses James went by buses, as a comparison. Those scenes on the buses as James move around excitedly also works meaningfully as a transition to the new world.

But I think it doesn’t work as good as in the shorts in terms of building the protagonist emotional journey. It sacrifices when the director wants to tell the story from a bigger scale. The character is not as authentic as in the shorts. Some of his action feels out of the filmmaker’s intention. For example I don’t think James’s desire to live in the new house, and his motivation to take suicide is built up authentically in the film. I think the story is already strong enough to show these characters’ lives, including how James looks for help from an older girl who’s bullied by other kids after accidentally killing another boy, and his friendship with this idealistic boy named Kenny, and the complicated relationship of James’ parents. All these are amazing characters with believable problems and emotion. In the end when it cuts from the dream house to James suicide, it looks like an artistic but political image to show the comparison purposefully. But I don’t feel connected well with the characters. I would prefer the film end with the parents’ relationship and James and the girl’s relationship, kept within the characters, while life will keep going without significant change.

Ratcatcher is the first feature-length film by British female director Lynn Ramsay. Since being released in 1999, it has won lots of awards at various film festivals, because of not only the delicacy of its shooting but also its profound reflection on British society in the 1970s.

Fig 1 The death of James' friend 0:06:33

This contemporary film’s realistic focus on the working class inherits the spirit of social realism in the British New Wave in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, on the one hand, the British economy was devastated by the war, the middle class was weakened and the working class appealed to a fair and stable social environment (Winson, 2013, p. 22). On the other hand, the success of the Soviet Union has raised people’s doubts about the capitalist system. Hence, the image of the “angry young men” began to appear in literature and film, usually showing the discontent of the working class with class society (Luo, 2019, p. 24). The films of this period are known as British New Wave and social realism, or working-class realism from the content, poetic realism from style.

Furthermore, the Labor party, which represented the interest of the working class, began to dominate in parliament, and strongly promoted nationalization and welfare policies. However, after some degree of economic recovery, the defects of the welfare system unveiled gradually and led to stagflation (Winson, 2013, pp. 5-6). Until 1975, Margaret Thatcher of the Conservative party came to power and advocated neoliberalism, cutting welfare spending, and encouraging market competition (Scott-Samuel et al, 2014, p. 54). The British economy was boosted but also brought a widening of the class division and the decline in the living quality of the working class. Therefore, in the 1980s, British social realism was revived and lots of films focusing on the working class appeared again (Shafer, 2001, p. 9). The story of Ratcatcher happens in 1973 and reflects the life of the working class at the end of the welfare society, many of the details in the film are closely related to the social background at that time.

l Laborers and Rats

Rats is perhaps a metaphor for laborers. The welfare system provides enough living security and seriously discourages the laborers’ enthusiasm for work. The traditional virtue of labor is replaced by the lazy pleasure of consumerism (Zhang & Lin, 2018, p. 40). In the film, James’ father is a representative of the working class, sleeps all day instead of working, indulges in TV, beer, and football. His only wish is for the committee to allocate a new house.

Fig 2 James' father is watching TV 0:19:24

Moreover, any attempt to reduce welfare will cause public discontent, like this cleaning workers’ strike. The garbage in the streets and the television news reports all hint at this situation.

Fig 3 The report on the strike 0:12:47

Under this circumstance, tax revenue falls but welfare spending stays high. The government is in a passive position and the national economy is in a downturn. The working class does not create social value but lives in the burrow of the welfare system like the rat. The strike in the film leads to a chaotic community where rats live with people, implying they are homogenous, dirty, poor, and living at the bottom. The ratcatcher is referring to the coming Thatcher reforms, to the abolition of the welfare state and the elimination of the welfare-dependent working class. At the end of the film, the army, representing the government, is deployed to clean up rats and rubbish, while residents shout abuse upstairs.

Fig 4 The army is cleaning up the rats 1:20:02

l Males and Soccer

As a female director, Ramsay pays deep attention to gender identity. The identity of the male is lost at that time. When livelihoods depend on welfare, the role of men as the source of income is weakened. By contrast, when the center of life moves from society, the public sphere, to family, the private sphere, consumerism overwhelms the culture of the working-class, the status of the female is promoted (Zhang & Lin, 2018, p. 40). Therefore, for the male, on the one hand, they feel a sense of marginalization in this loss of identity, so they try to acquire a sense of self-satisfaction through a kind of arbitrary, which includes contempt for the female and arrogance towards their juniors, such as James’ father slaps his wife when drunk or the teenagers humiliate Margaret and tease James and Kenny.

Fig 5 The teenagers are teasing James 0:31:44

On the other hand, soccer, as a sport that relies on unity and physical strength, becomes the last symbol of working-class culture, and the spiritual sustenance of the male. In the film, boys play soccer in the street, James’ father persistently gives James a pair of soccer shoes as a gift, and even the teenagers throw Kenny’s mouse back and forth like soccer.

Fig 6 The teenagers are teasing mouse 0:50:00

l Children and Water

In the Ratcatcher, children may be more like “angry young men”. The story is narrated from the perspective of James, a child. Compared with the frustration of adults, children’s psychological activities are more complicated. Vitality is a child’s nature, which is suppressed by a negative social atmosphere. The desire of young men to break through the social hierarchy by working hard is limited by a lazy welfare system, like carrying the death of a friend.

Fig 7 James suicides in the canal 1:27:55

Water is perhaps a metaphor for the welfare system. Water can either support life or deprive it. The bathtub full of water brings James happiness, but the endless sewage in the canal drowns his friend like an overdose of welfare, which is gently but fatal, so neither James nor his friend struggles in the canal.

Fig 8 James and Margaret play in the bath 0:59:57

Therefore, children are the only ones having hopes for the future, because the future is an escape from reality, which is the origin of the poetic element. The suburban house for James and the moon for Kenny, are all the places with poetic background music, and without water.

Fig 9 No water in suburb house 0:40:51

Furthermore, under this repression, children are eager to grow up and have a voice, so they imitate the elders. James tried to join the teenagers and control his sisters. Whereas, when the suburban house is locked and Margaret is still humiliated by the teenagers, James realizes his helplessness and gives up and suicides in the canal. But for Kenny, after being rescued from the canal, he joins the camp of ratcatcher.

Fig 10 Kenny is catching rats 1:24:25

Ratcatcher is a calm and slow film. What Ramsay expresses is not simple criticism of Thatcherism or sympathy on the working-class, but the two-sidedness of policies and their great impact on the public. After two decades of Thatcher's policies, it is worth wondering what Britain is and about to face.

Word Count: 1080

（excluding 84 words on remarks of figures）

l Reference List (APA)

Calderwood, A. (Producer). Ramsay, L. (Screenwriter/ Director). (1999). Ratcatcher [Motion Picture]. Britain: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Luo, X. (2019). 论英国新浪潮电影的“厨房水槽”现实主义美学特征 [the Realistic Aesthetic Characteristics of "Kitchen Sink" in British New Wave Films]. Journal of Guizhou University (Art Edition), 33(2), 22-26. doi: 10.15958/j.cnki.gdxbysb.2019.02.004

Scott-Samuel, A., Bambra, C., Collins, C., Hunter, D. J., McCartney, G., & Smith, K. (2014). The impact of Thatcherism on health and well-being in Britain. International Journal of Health Services, 44(1), 53-71. Retrieved from JSTOR Journals. Retrieved from //www.jstor.org/stable/45140692

Shafer, S. C. (2001). An overview of the working class in British feature film from the 1960s to the 1980s: from class consciousness to marginalization. International Labor and Working-Class History. (59), 3-14. Retrieved from JSTOR Journals. Retrieved from //www.jstor.org/stable/27672706

Winson, A. (2013). Social realism of British New Wava “Left” films: The working-class border character. (Master’s Thesis) Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database.

Zhang, J., & Lin X. (2018). 20世纪八九十年代英国工人阶级电影特征 [The characteristics of working class in British working class films in the 1980s and 1990s]. Movie Literature, (10), 39-41. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.0495-5692.2018.10.013