Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

freemantle_uk Grim social dramas and kitchen sink dramas are a stable of the British film industry. There are ever present in some form or another and Ratcatcher served as Lynne Ramsay's directional debut.In a rough housing estate in Glasgow in the 1970s James Gillespie (William Eadie) is a 12-year-old boy who accidentally kills another boy during a fight. Despite his guilt James hopes his family can move to a new housing estate and way from the urban decay and poverty of his home area as rubbish builds up on the street. During the course of the film James befriends an older girl, Margaret (Leanne Mullen), who is used as a sex toy for a gang of local thugs, sees the anti-social behaviour and social deprivation of the area.Ratcatcher is certainly a grim film as we see the world of urban poverty, whilst Ramsay also adds some artistic flashes. Ratcatcher is an art-house film that film scholars would eagerly dissects every scene and shot with glee. But as a story there is no real narrative throughline, as elements are more loosely connected. There are obvious themes about a young boy coming-of-age, losing his innocents in a number of ways, his sexual awakening and wider themes about urban decay, social commentary about ignored estates and how authority is distrusted as we see it through a child's eyes.There are many story lines that could easily have worked as their own films, whether it is a whole story of a young boy trying to hide what he did whilst also struggling alone with his guilt, or a film about why Margaret is abused and the impact on the girl or even seeing more through the boy's eyes.Ratcatcher is a very well-acted film with the young cast and Ramsay does not shy away from the more controversial aspects of the film. Ramsay does showcase a very cruel environment that is tough to watch (and it meant to be). Ramsay also has more dreamy quality to some of her scenes and shots, such as when James is running in a field. But there is a sequence with a mouse floating when tied to a balloon which was really out of place.Ratcatcher is a solid debut film from Ramsay, but it is a film that is lacking a real story or drive. There are better films with this type of setting and have more of a story, including the Glasgow set Red Road.

Layton September Ratcatcher is a beautiful film set in the less aesthetically pleasing back drop drop of the Glasgow tenement blocks of the nineteen seventies. It's a story about childhood, tragedy and an unutterable struggle against circumstance and surrounding before your life has barely begun. This is not a film that roars though, on the contrary it is a very quiet piece with a wistful message. Lynne Ramsey's directorial approach is seemingly non-obtrusive, capturing a naturalism of the child actors that some film makers could only dream of. There are moments that are incredibly bleak, but a melancholic tenderness prevails. The dream like quality as main protagonist James escapes his rat-infested urban home and escapes to the countryside are some of the most heartbreakingly beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed on film. As he runs out into golden fields, encompassing a little boy who is holding onto his childhood with fingertips...

CountZero313 I saw Ratcatcher on screen at a film festival in Japan. It was the most personal film I had ever seen - I grew up in Glasgow, I was the same age as the protagonist when the dustbin men went on strike, I climbed among the same mountains of rubbish bags, I could see that canal from my living-room window, I played on the foundations of a new estate being built near my home on the way back from school, and my first love was an older neighbour. When the film finished, I was speechless; I felt like Lynne Ramsay had stolen my soul. She came on stage at that festival and I found out she was my age and grew up down the street from me in Maryhill. That explained the intimacy of the film; however, the most telling comment that evening came from a Japanese member of the audience. He said to Ramsay: "Your film took me back to my childhood. Thank you." The only objectivity I have on Ratcatcher is that man's comment - which was applauded by the rest of the Japanese audience. If he is to believed, this is not just another gritty portrayal of survival in the brutal back streets of Glasgow, it is a universal tale of childhood longing, confusion, loss and redemption. I think you should believe him. I bought another compendium of British short films just to get hold of the director's 'Gasman,' which is as perfect a short film as you will ever see. It is included in some DVD editions, and is worth looking out for.

Benoît A. Racine (benoit-3) This film about growing up urban in Scotland is masterful in its depiction of life as an unstoppable downward spiral of degradation, social entropy and anomie ending in slime, criminality and despair. Every step of this short and brutal downfall is lovingly illustrated with scenes of filth, coarseness, profanity, idiocy, moral turpitude, ignorance, poverty, intoxication and vermin. It's quite a ride, even though it rather shamelessly borrows a Carl Orff theme that was already made famous by its use in Terrence Malick's "Badlands" for its score and reproduces Mike Leigh's naturalistic atmospheres without the humour and a single glimmer of hope. Should the viewer feel like cleansing his palate after this ordeal, may I recommend two films on the same subject, the poetry and terrors of childhood? They are just as rewarding but without the vomit-inducing sadism and body fluids. They are:(1) "The Steamroller and The Violin"/"Katok i skripka", 1960, URSS, a 42-minute student film by Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the loveliest films ever put together on planet Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053987/), and(2) "The Children Are Watching Us"/"Bambini ci guardano", Vittorio DeSica's first collaboration with neo-realist screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, 1943, an almost forgotten classic, finally on Criterion DVD (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034493/).