Poverty (in Ratcatcher)

Awww… one of my very first threads! I’d forgotten about this one!

DFFoO – you forgot your first one?

Actually I can’t remember what my very first one was, so yes, I guess… I’m gonna do some nostalgic browsing through my post history now…

From the same salon review:

…impressive and frustrating debut feature…. She doesn’t have the usual coldness of filmmakers who reduce people to figures in their aesthetic blueprints, but since she hasn’t found a way inside them they feel reduced nonetheless.

The reviewer is approaching the film from character and is frustrated b/c they can’t find a way inside them.

Ramsey’s films don’t require the viewer to get inside the characters. We know who the characters are from their milieu – that is her style of film making.

“The reviewer is approaching the film from character and is frustrated b/c they can’t find a way inside them.”

“Leaps of feeling,” right. (Charles Taylor is a very good critic, but I think here he’s wanting something from Ramsay that see isn’t interested in doing).

@ Kate

Sure, but the ballon scene is clear indication that this is not a strictly realistic film. And the film is referencing the Pied Piper legend, in which the rats (and, in some versions, later the children of the town) were led into the river and drowned.

Regarding his “death” at the end of the film, this also doesn’t come out of left field as some seem to think. If you look at the stills I posted in my first post, you start out with the image of the kid’s face shrouded in the curtains, he later dies, then at least two instances (lying on the couch and in the bathtub) that are staged and shot in such a way that these suggest a corpse in a coffin.

Essentially, I agree with Robert that, even if you feel that his drowning isn’t justified by Ramsey’s development of the character, it’s justified formally by the way the film is constructed.

Nobody complained about Mouchette.

Throughout the film, what I saw from James’ character was a conscious attempt to detach himself from his surroundings following the accidental killing at the beginning, and shut out the misery of his surroundings, replacing them with fantasy. Witnessing the bullying of two helpless people, Kenny and the girl, he can’t detach himself and tries to draw them into the same comforting fantasies that help him, but he can’t do anything about their situation because of fear (Symbolized by his inability to get the girl’s glasses out of six inch deep water).

Later he has his fantasy future permanently closed to him, and according to his father, this was his fault. He couldn’t have his fantasy, so he wanted to shut down both of their fantasies as well. I think the reason for the suicide is that he thought his situation was permanent, and he’d also permanently lost his coping mechanism, so dying was a way for him to retreat into the coping mechanism.

Sure, but the ballon scene is clear indication that this is not a strictly realistic film.

The balloon scene and the final scene where the family moves are meant as the boy’s fantasies that contrast to and provide an escape from the harsh reality of his existence. His suicide is part of the “real world.” There is nothing to indicate it shouldn’t be taken literally.

And the film is referencing the Pied Piper legend, in which the rats (and, in some versions, later the children of the town) were led into the river and drowned.

Right, but I think that fairy tale is referenced for its thematic content, not to suggest that the realistic world in the story is fantastical. It’s similar to how the Pied Piper legend is used in “The Sweet Hereafter,” to give meaning to the realistic events that happen.

I see what you’re saying about her foreshadowing his death through formal elements, but I disagree that she doesn’t care about making her characters’ actions seem realistic. She seems to put a lot of energy into creating realistic interactions between characters elsewhere in the film, so why drop the ball at the end?

I’ve seen this film several times over the years, written about it twice (most recently for the A&F Top 100 which MUBI has a thread for) and this is the first time the thought even occurs to me that James takes his life at the end of Ratcatcher. I have always seen that scene as allegorical. He has been surrounded by trash. Life is a stench for James, in many ways. Water purifies, which is what James, loaded with the guilt of the death and the day to day living in squalor, has been searching for. Purification.

I wish I could watch those final scenes again right now to see what comes immediately before the drowing/full-immersion baptismal scene, but I know that immediately after that is more allegory, this time communal, of an entire community’s imagination as they trek to the housing James earlier discovered. Right?

“used in “The Sweet Hereafter”

Sort of, yeah, except here the story is being used much more literally than Egoyan does.

“She seems to put a lot of energy into creating realistic interactions between characters elsewhere in the film”

True, but I think there’s a tendency to misread the film as “kitchen sink” realism, or something akin to what other British filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh (and now, Andrea Arnold) are doing . . . where there’s a sort of implied objectivity. This film seems to me to be firmly rooted in the boy’s psychological point of view, and, with kids, the fantasy/reality distinction is a much more fluid concept. I wouldn’t say that she doesn’t care about making her characters actions realistic, but I also don’t think that this is the _primary_concern as it often is in many realistic films.

Ramsay :

“A lot of people have misconstrued this film as social realism and I don’t think it is. I try to avoid some of the cliches of that. To be honest, I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes, going into why we’re shooting this way, why we’re looking at it that way, trying to get under the skin of it a bit, inside the boy’s head. It’s a bit of a risky thing to do because essentially we’re using nontraditional actors, so you go from this kind of harsh reality into something that’s much more hard to pin down. It’s more unreal, I guess. It’s almost like two opposing styles. Don’t ask where that comes from — I think it’s something I realize I’ve developed in my shorts.”

“I know that immediately after that is more allegory, this time communal, of an entire community’s imagination as they trek to the housing James earlier discovered. Right?”

@ Persona

Basically, yes, however, after the scene of his family walking across the field there’s a shot of him smiling, then a fade to black that last several seconds, and then a matching shot of him under the water again.

Ramsey, in another interview

“EE: When you finished it, did you think he drowned?

LR: No, for me he’s in the process of drowning. It’s always in the present tense. That’s what as a film-maker I was trying to do. I enjoyed playing with the structure of a film like that. It was quite a tenuous narrative in many ways but it was more of an emotional kind of journey. That’s the way I felt about it, and there were many, many ways I could have played with that. I could have cut that film till the cows come home. I still might go back when I’m very old if I could face it again. I’ll do a DVD version, if anybody will let me re-cut it. I’m interested in different types of structure. The project I’m doing now, Morvern Callar, I was interested in because it isn’t a very straight narrative, it is original in terms of character, it’s original in terms of plot in some ways as well. That’s a major risk because the reason conventional narratives are liked is because they work, and they’ve always worked. People like to be led like that. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t another way of doing it. I enjoy experimenting and taking risks with the form."

. . . I do agree with you that the scene has a sort of baptismal aspect to it, though. I think, the way it’s done in the film, it can fairly be said to be both.

I’m pretty sure that we’re supposed to think he kills himself. I mean, we see his lifeless looking body floating underwater for a sustained shot beneath the end credits. And as Matt pointed out there’s all that foreshadowing of his death: the bathtub and couch coffins, the curtain over his head that resembles a body bag. In the final scene when the little girl holds a mirror up to the sky that’s suggestive of her brother being in heaven. I’m not sure how the canal could be purifying given that it’s as filthy as a sewer.

Matt Parks: . . . I do agree with you that the scene has a sort of baptismal aspect to it, though. I think, the way it’s done in the film, it can fairly be said to be both.

Baptism in the Christian sense is supposed to represent death to life, the spiritual encountering and aligning with the way the natural world is made to work: seasonally, the life we receive from dead food, etc. I think you are absolutely right that it can be fairly said to be both.

And yet, it’s an odd (somewhat impossible?) way to commit suicide. I do not think suicide is intended. Both meanings can be read, but the scene is allegorical or metaphorical either way.

He’s been blamed by his dad for letting the housing officials in, essentially being blamed for botching the one escape route the family had hoped for. He goes to Margaret Anne for comfort, yet witnesses her being taken advantage of in a shed. As much as he may have wanted to he couldn’t save her from herself. Nothing has changed, and nothing will ever change. When James lashes out at Kenny for killing Snowball, finally childhood’s innocence is lost.

Also, I don’t think the idea of the death being symbolic is that off the mark. I think the film is ambiguous in this regard. His death occurs right after a scene that is in his imagination (the family moving into the house), and even his death scene has something oddly ethereal and dreamlike about it. It almost works as double dreams, two contrasting dreams of hope: one of the hope of a better future in this housing estate (a dream which cannot be possible, as the family walking from the wrong direction over the field shows), the other a hope of release from this world. The final scene is in no way black and white and can be taken as both reality and a dream.

“the scene is allegorical or metaphorical either way.”

I agree.

His death occurs right after a scene that is in his imagination (the family moving into the house)

I thought his death occurred before this scene?

@ Kate

Ramsay says that he’s drowning (present tense) not drowned (past tense) through to the last shot you get of him after the fade to black.

I also got the impression he was letting Margaret Anne turn to him for comfort. He was indulging in her ‘true love’ fantasy to mentally distance herself from the powerlessness she feels with the guys who take advantage of her.

I don’t see how the ending is ambiguous about his death, given everything I mentioned in my second to last post.

And this:

No, for me he’s in the process of drowning.

Even if he’s in the process of drowning, that would indicate he does drown.

And this indicates she was trying to get into the character’s heads, in contrast to what Robert Peabody argued:

I try to avoid some of the cliches of that. To be honest, I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes, going into why we’re shooting this way, why we’re looking at it that way, trying to get under the skin of it a bit, inside the boy’s head.

You wrote:

This film seems to me to be firmly rooted in the boy’s psychological point of view, and, with kids, the fantasy/reality distinction is a much more fluid concept. I wouldn’t say that she doesn’t care about making her characters actions realistic, but I also don’t think that this is the primary concern as it often is in many realistic films.

Right, but if she’s trying to get into characters’ heads and convey their emotional states, which she apparently was trying to do based on that interview, she also fails in that regard imo. As the reviewer I quoted above wrote the emotion of the suicide at the end isn’t “earned.” She keeps an emotional distance from the main character, so the ending doesn’t resonate.

When she says “psychology of the scene,” I don’t think she’s talking about emotions.

Even if it isn’t believable from an emotional/psychological standpoint, I still think it has structural validity. The small point that Jirin raised about Mouchette seems to fit well here. We know that Bresson is not trying to get into the psychology of his characters, so we can accept the idea of Mouchette committing suicide, even if it doesn’t necessarily ring true on an emotional/psychological level. Ramsey is mixing things up a little bit; she’s not as strict a formalist as Bresson, but we shouldn’t be tricked by that fact.

@Nathan

We know that Bresson is not trying to get into the psychology of his characters, so we can accept the idea of Mouchette committing suicide

Yeah, but Ramsay clearly states that she is:

I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes…..trying to get under the skin of it a bit, inside the boy’s head.

But does that mean that that approach pervades every scene and every shot? Probably not. Just from looking at some of the frames that Matt provided (I haven’t seen the moving film in a while), you can see that Ramsey is interested in other, more abstract approaches to her narrative too. Also, I do think it’s important to remember that artists can explain their intentions, but aren’t always consciously aware of everything that goes into a film. I throughly enjoy reading director interviews, but tend to take them with a grain of salt.

What I’m saying is that psychological and structural readings don’t have to be mutually exclusive. She can break from the psychological reading at points, even if one of her main interests was in exploring the psychology of scenes.

But does that mean that that approach pervades every scene and every shot?

No, but I think it’s important that if anywhere has emotional resonance it’s the end of the movie, especially given that scene is a climax in this story.

@ Persona

That was how I read the ending…baptismal – purification of the garbage.

@ Kate And this indicates she was trying to get into the character’s heads, in contrast to what Robert Peabody argued:
Not much contrast there To be honest, I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes, going into why we’re shooting this way, why we’re looking at it that way, trying to get under the skin of it a bit…

What I am getting at is understanding that the way-in-which is more important to appreciate her films:
I’m interested in different types of STRUCTURE. The project I’m doing now, Morvern Callar, I was interested in because it isn’t a very straight narrative, it is original in terms of character, it’s original in terms of plot in some ways as well. That’s a major risk because the reason conventional narratives are liked is because they work, and they’ve always worked. People like to be led like that. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t another way of doing it. I enjoy experimenting and taking risks with the form.

Process, the ‘how’, is what is important here. if one locks onto the structure, the ‘how’ becomes more visible and the ending makes more sense.

Not much contrast there To be honest, I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes, going into why we’re shooting this way, why we’re looking at it that way, trying to get under the skin of it a bit…

You cut off the end of her quote, the most relevant part:

I was trying to go into the psychology of the scenes…..trying to get under the skin of it a bit, inside the boy’s head.

Right, to me, when she’s taking about “psychology of the scenes,” she’s talking about the psychology as a structural principle more than she is about establishing a conventional narrative causality.

Right, to me, when she’s taking about “psychology of the scenes,” she’s talking about the psychology as a structural principle more than she is about establishing a conventional narrative causality.

Where do you get that? I don’t think her quote necessarily points to that reading at all. And can you be more specific by what you mean?

Yes Kate, for emphasis – the inside the boy’s head is almost an afterthought.

Because immediately before that she’s talking about avoiding the cliches of social realism . . . one of which is an almost scientific cause-and-effect approach.