Ratcatcher 1999

 Ratcatcher 1999

I was going to write about Ernst Lubitsch's sweet 1940 pastry of a movie “The Shop Around The Corner” until I saw Lynne Ramsay's debut film “Ratcatcher: the other night. This one jolted me out of M,G.M. land into a depressed and rough area of Glasgow during a terrible and long garbage strike of 1975. You can almost smell the stench of the rot coming through the 100's and 100's of bagged up garbage and dead rodents. The focus is on one torn family Da, Ma and their three children made up of 2 young girls and a sensitive lonely young boy James 12 years old and acted by a non actor William Eadie in a wonderful big eared performance. This is not an uncommon story and has been told many times in literature, films and life. I was reminded of the recent books by the fine writer Douglas Stuart who has written two great novels “Young Mungo” and “Shuggie Bain” both set in a similar tattered Glasgow landscape as “Ratcatcher” and also has young troubled boys as the center focus.

One day a terrible incident happens at the beginning of the film, down by the polluted canal that runs near the shattered housing estates one of which James lives in with his troubled family. This is the pull of the film and Young James's life. James dreams of a better life for his family with hopes of moving into a better place to live and there is a lovely sequence where James takes a bus ride to an housing estate that is under construction where he wanders the buildings sitting in a not yet installed bathtub and taking a leak in a not yet installed toilet his urine spilling out on the floor after which he roams through a lovely field outside the unit which is a recurring image in the film.

He takes up with a slightly older and sexually experienced girl in the neighborhood Margaret Anne well played by Leanne Mullen who is a sexual toy for some of the older boys in the neighborhood, who takes James under her tattered wings, Their relationship is chaste but sexual and their scenes together are both touching, awkward and dangerous. Especially lovely is their shared bathing in her bathtub where they wash each other and James looks for lice in her hair a sequence that is echoed in a previous scene of his mom looking for lice in his hair. His Da and Ma are acted with reality by Tommy Flanagan who has two visible scars on his face from a real life mugging incident and Mandy Matthews as his much put upon mother. Da drinks and Ma worries. The movie has been restored by Criterion with necessary subtitles as the Glasgow accents are dense, and without them much would be lost. I add this film about young adolescent boys to my list of favorites including The 400 Blows, Kes, The Little Fugitive, Night of The Hunter, Afraid of The Dark, Moonlight,  Lelo, The Long Day Closes

Cinema Paradiso and others. One of the best films of the year.