捕鼠者1999

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.

以写实的手法刻画： 孤独、压抑、敏感的少年内心世界， 成长的自我。 更何况还有恐惧和内疚， 只好将好像永远消耗不完的精力发泄在荒诞与暴力。 他们既是捕鼠者，也是被捕的鼠。 有着自己的生活，自己的个性，自己的境遇的父辈们， 他们也有他们的程度，也有他们的难处， 成长的家庭。 肮脏的社区，混乱的街道，昏庸的政治， 成长的环境。 … 但是， 少年的内心深处其实是温暖和柔软的， 他们渴望被尊重和了解， 不只是吃饱喝足，更需要精神与心灵的关怀，与爱。 父辈们虽可以理解，但也可以做的更多。 … 那窗明几净，那蓝天白云，那金色稻田， 和那少年的笑容， 是最美好的期许！

梦想中金灿灿的生活，和恶臭腐坏的现实之间的距离，可能比死与生之间的距离大得多。电影中阴雨不绝的格拉斯哥，垃圾遍地、老鼠四窜的居住环境，让偶尔的几个想象镜头显得尤其宝贵。镜头暗下去的时候我心一直揪着，喊着快起来啊！还好结尾看到了麦田中他的笑脸，一切美好的像什么也没发生过一样。男主角的演绎不错，给他点赞哦。

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