It was probably easier to appreciate the miserabilist tendencies of Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s work with this debut, as it hadn’t yet become an oppressive trend (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here). Seeing Ratcatcher after those films, as I did, makes it feel like a putrid fountainhead. Set in a rundown Glasgow housing complex during a 1973 garbage strike, the movie seemingly emits rancid smells from the screen—either due to the brown canal where a few of the film’s most significant incidents take place or the piles of bursting garbage bags, pulsating with rats, that are littered across the landscape. The narrative follows 12-year-old James (William Eadie) as he tries to navigate this environment, as well as an alcoholic father, sadistic bullies, and his own burgeoning sexuality. (Inasmuch as it traces the formation of an “angry young man,” Ratcatcher counts as a late entry in the UK tradition of kitchen sink realism.) Ramsay has a gifted eye—the opening shot, of a boy twisting himself in a lacy curtain, is a stunner—and she establishes an undeniably vivid sense of place, yet there is a gravitation toward the tragic and repugnant that goes beyond description and toward a place of awed fascination. Because of that, the film’s gestures toward anything like transcendence or grace—particularly a final sequence that I took to be fantasy—often feel false.
(11/7/2025)
