捕鼠者1999

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。

This blog post will engage with the main themes in the popular reception of the film Ratcatcher (Ramsay, 1999), using as a sample 25 user reviews and comments from the Chinese review-aggregation website Douban, selected on the basis of their length and complexity.

One of the most frequently encountered opinions, 10 of the reviews that I examined interpreted the film from the perspective of teenagers. They think this film depicts the inner world of a depressed, lonely, and sensitive teenager in a realistic way, and reflects the poverty and unbearable life of working-class life in Britain through the vision of a child. In particular, users write of ‘the growing pains of a teenager at the bottom of the pile’. Most people are saddened by the desperate emotional rendering of the film – a story of a traumatized teenager's confusion and sadness in the face of society and the world. For viewers of Douban, the film has reaped the most accolades for its portrayal of British society. Similarly frequent are views about the director’s shooting technique and cinematography, with users often remarking on Ramsay’s solid work as a photographer, revelling in the close-ups and contrasts between the movements and stillness of the shots in the film’s scene.

The film does reflect the oppression and suffering of the British working class through the eyes of the child, James, and many social contradictions are further revealed through James’s interactions with his family and friends. Although Chinese audiences are immersed in an atmosphere of despair and sadness, in my viewpoint, there is still a sense of redemption and hope in some scenes.

In the Ratcatcher, the story is set in the 1970s during a general strike by rubbish workers in the Glasgow area, where the streets were littered with rubbish, houses were in disrepair and rivers were muddy. Like many films typified by the British Kitchen sink Drama, Ratcatcher exposes the grim characteristics of society. It focuses on the lives of poor communities and the impact of poverty on families, and shows the depression and powerlessness of working-class life (Williams,1977; Higson, 1984). But Ramsey largely rejects institutional context and history, abandoning traditional political drives in favour of a more symbolic, suggestive, obscure narrative (Carlota, 2016). Thus, the Ratcatcher can be seen as a film of poetic realism and viewers can feel its hints of hope and redemption in scenes of despair.

Figure 1: The city streets are full of rubbish

Kenny's Snowball seems to be an amalgamation of destruction and hope. James has to endure the violence of those older than him but also wants to protect this cute little mouse. In the next series of shots, which are James's fantasy, the mouse flies to the moon in a red balloon and joins other mouse companions. This fantasy is also James's longing, which also represents the innocence and hope of children. As Aitken (2011) points out, Ramsey's use of fantasy techniques belies some of the tones of realism and makes surprises to create a form of poetic realism. Because at this point, James hopes to find his true playmate, who will no longer have to endure violence and pain. Just like rats fleeing from the earth, he wants to escape this awful community. Thus, poetically, the Ratcatcher gives the audience a child's perspective of how the underclass grows from the rubbish and how James releases his guilt and pain in his fantasies. James' fantasies seem to escape the mire of life and this moment of innocent simplicity contrasts with the dreary tone of the film, which makes the audience realise that these underclass teenagers still harbour hope, only to slowly fade away in the struggle of reality.

Figure 2: James’ fantasy of Snowball flying to the moon

If the fantasy of a snowball flying to the moon represents the innocence and hope of a child, James in the wheat field has a sense of redemption in the film's desperate and heavy tone. The golden fields of wheat are a stark contrast to the dirty canals and rubbish-strewn city streets, where James can run freely through them without suffering violence or pain. In this poetic scene, James steps through the window and jumps into the wheat field. And at the same time, the cheerful and melodious music brings the audience to the romantic world of the child. Here he fantasizes about having a new house built in a field, which is also James' hope. The Ratcatcher seems to set up a 'paradise' in which the hope of society is rediscovered in the children’s vision.

Figure 3: James in the wheat field

Sadly, at the end of the film, James is unable to cope with the growing pains in a society of inequality and despair, and he chooses to die. However, the scenes immediately following add some imaginative warmth as he and his family arrive in the wheat field carrying belongings with the smile on their face, where their new home has been built. But they are still framed beyond the window, which seems to suggest their isolation from real life. After this scene, there is still a grey scene in which James sinks into the dirty river. This is a combination of landscape and narrative; thus, the dialectic of illusion and disillusionment is carried out, from the good mess into the bad mess (Trotter, 2008). Moreover, this tragic ending seems to hint at the disillusionment of James’s hope, but some pauses in the scenes, such as the pauses in the shot as James sinks and the pause in the running through the wheat field, still give the audience a powerful sense of redemption.

Figure 4: James’s fantasy of moving to a new house

Figure 5: James sinks into the canal

In sum, Ratcatcher is a poetic realist film that places individual confusion and social trauma in the scenes of despair and sadness through the eyes of children. However, the film leaves room for hope and redemption for the children, preserving them between fantasies and camera pauses.

Words: 1013

Reference list:

Aitken, S. C. (2007). Poetic child realism: Scottish film and the construction of childhood. Scottish Geographical Journal, 123 (1), 68-86.

Higson, A. (1984). Space, Place, Spectacle. Screen25 (4/5), 2-21.

Larrea, C. (2016). Ratcatcher. Senses of Cinema, 80, 1–5.

Ramsay, L. (Screenwriter/ Director). (1999). Ratcatcher[Motion picture]. France: Pathé Pictures International

Trotter, D. (2008). Lynne Ramsay’s “Ratcatcher”: Towards a Theory of Haptic Narrative. Paragraph, 31(2), 138–158.

Williams, R. (1977). A Lecture on Realism. Screen18 (1), pp.61-74

#BFI# #BigsScreenClassics# 现实主义作品，带有肯洛奇的风格，与《小孩与鹰》一样，以英国底层小孩的眼睛看这个全英范围内的大罢工，再看这个社会。

本片在开场就展现给观众了一场惨剧，让观众与小男主一样参与到了这次意外中，弱肉强食的社会中，谁有确定自己是那捕鼠人，而不是只老鼠，片中老鼠似乎就象征着小男主自己，垃圾在城市之中堆积，大量的工程停摆，老鼠在大量繁殖，那条承载了大量悲伤的河又一次送葬了一条生命，与开始呼应。

视觉上，构图和运镜非常棒，尤其是构图，画面分割，大量的前景遮挡，都让同样知道秘密的观众从视觉上体会到那种空间被大量压缩的窒息感。特写升格很大程度的放大了情绪。

听觉上，很多时候配乐还是偏欢快的，带有“青春成长”的节奏感，当然对于悲剧的烘托使用的耳鸣也很不错，让观众把注意力都集中在画面上。

不太喜欢超现实表达的部分，无论是小白鼠的升空和结尾处的处理，逃避现实的残酷再以超现实展现的笑容始终不如现实来的更有冲击力。