Ratcatcher

Ratcatcher. Lynne Ramsay, 1999.

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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #162, released 2002. Scots English with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.

Summary: Cruel handling of a mouse, depictions of dead rats.

Details:

1) A 5-second shot of a dead rat with associated blood, 19:36-19:41.

2) Kenny’s white mouse is removed from its cage and tossed within a circle of boys, 49:00-50:50.

The situation escalates until the ominous utterings of “Kill it” and “Throw it at the wall,” neither of which happens before Kenny reclaims his mouse and retreats into the apartment building.

3) At 51:15 we see Kenny at his open apartment window with a helium birthday balloon tied to his mouse’s tail. He releases the ballon and it begins to float away, segueing into a depiction of Kenny’s fantasy that the balloon will carry his mouse to the moon where it will live happily with other mice. This concludes at 52:35.

4) At 1:04:30 Kenny goes into a 30-second frenzy of beating trash bags trying to find and kill rats. The implication, rather than the imagery, is violent.

5) From 1:19:00-1:20:49 a garbage crew comes to the trash-ridden neighborhood and the children join the crew in carnally beating and stabbing about in piles of trash bags, exposing rats. Again, the gleefully violent narrative implication is worse than the images.

6) At 1:24:00 Kenny comes to James with a rat he has killed. James expresses concern about Kenny’s actions through 1:24:45, culminating in his explanation to Kenny that the pet mouse is dead, and not living on the moon.

Ratcatcher is a densely written depiction of complicated relationships, centering on James and Kenny who could grow to be strong compassionate men if it weren’t for the thug-like presence of so-called ‘mates’ who inflict their intertwined cruelty to women and cruelty to animals. In the real world, all young men are confronted with the pressure to conform to misogynistic culture, and Ratcatcher dares to show the easy interchangeability of violence toward women (only acceptable up to a certain age or within certain limits) with violence toward animals (socially encouraged throughout a man’s entire life). By setting the film in a Scottish slum where the only ‘game’ are rats and hopeless girls, the film calls a club a club and dismisses raised fingers about legalized hunting/rape available only at higher levels of the lower class.

Ratcatcher is a film that might make you remember why you said goodbye to one set of mates long ago, or might give you the push you need if you’re on a fence. See also notes on Lynne Ramsay’s insightful Small Deaths, included on the Criterion release along with Gasman and Kill the Day.

@ BL