On DVD at home with Lucía on 2 June 2009.
I should really be more disciplined and jot down my thoughts soon after watching the film. Ratcatcher is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while, but my thoughts on the film have become a little fragmented in the 10 days since I saw it.
I do remember that the film is thoroughly enveloping as a child’s perspective, and the child acting in the film is brilliantly captured, no less so than in films like My Life as a Dog, Le 400 coups, and Le vieil homme et l’enfant.
The film is from the perspective of a young boy named James, living in Scottish public housing building during a garbage collectors’ strike. On one side of the building there is a large, growing pile of garbage infested with rats. On the other side of the building there is a large, open canal. This canal is constantly present in the background of the film (frequently visible through windows in interior shots), and it is along (or in) the canal that many of the scenes in the film take place. Drowning in the canal seems to be an important theme in the film (it opens with a child drowning).
There is a lot of repetition in the film, sort of illustrating the cyclical life in a limited environment. One recurring activity is hunting around the garbage bags looking for rats. Another is watching older boys get off on mistreating others and bullying an older girl.
A lot of the characters are sort of mysterious. It’s not always clear why the parents are acting the way they are, and James’ older sister in particular seems to have a whole other life that he’s not a part of. Similarly, the garbage strike is sort of a peculiar background event that seems only relevant in that it gives James a large pile of garbage in which to look for rats, and later a number of soldiers (they come to break the strike and clear up the garbage) that children are given free rein to taunt, impede, and hit. The housing inspectors (or social workers or whatever they are) that come to investigate his family’s living conditions are clearly important to James’ father, but to James the gravity of the visit only becomes apparent after they’ve left.
But the most effective part of the film’s portrayal of James’ perspective comes in the littler things. There are two scenes where James’ parents are asleep in their clothes, and James reaches out to pull his mother’s stocking over her toe (it’s sticking out through a hole). There is a scene where James pours salt onto the table into a pile and plays with it with a toy car while none of the other characters seem to notice.
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