Wow! Such a good movie.

Just so...so bad

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Enjoy nihilism? Scenes of squalor, abuse, emotional pain and death? Then this is the film for you. Enjoy expert cinematography, wonderfully natural performances, black humor and emotionally engaging characters? Again, this is the film to watch. An anti-Disney film centering around a boy and his misery. Has an opening credits scene I consider among the top ten of all time in terms of originality and execution. Some IMDb reviewers apply the word dull to this film, consider they were perhaps weened on MTV and the hyper active style filmmaking that followed. Ratcatcher is perhaps how cinema used to be in terms of pacing. Looking for entertainment? Look elsewhere. Need help entering a state of depression? Use Ratcatcher.

This film about growing up urban in Scotland is masterful in its depiction of life as an unstoppable downward spiral of degradation, social entropy and anomie ending in slime, criminality and despair. Every step of this short and brutal downfall is lovingly illustrated with scenes of filth, coarseness, profanity, idiocy, moral turpitude, ignorance, poverty, intoxication and vermin. It's quite a ride, even though it rather shamelessly borrows a Carl Orff theme that was already made famous by its use in Terrence Malick's "Badlands" for its score and reproduces Mike Leigh's naturalistic atmospheres without the humour and a single glimmer of hope. Should the viewer feel like cleansing his palate after this ordeal, may I recommend two films on the same subject, the poetry and terrors of childhood? They are just as rewarding but without the vomit-inducing sadism and body fluids. They are:(1) "The Steamroller and The Violin"/"Katok i skripka", 1960, URSS, a 42-minute student film by Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the loveliest films ever put together on planet Earth (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053987/), and(2) "The Children Are Watching Us"/"Bambini ci guardano", Vittorio DeSica's first collaboration with neo-realist screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, 1943, an almost forgotten classic, finally on Criterion DVD (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034493/).

Ratcatcher utterly surprised me. Not because of the talking, which I hardly understood at all (I'm Austrian), but because of the surprising scarcity of dialogues. I doubt that there was a single situation where any of the protagonists talked for more than five seconds in a row. That's why the movie wasn't that difficult to grasp, as most of the plot was primarily carried by images and stunning shots of William Eadie's character. I guess that there were minutes where no-one actually said a word for a long time - which makes this movie maybe the movie with the least words spoken I've ever seen. Concerning its plot - it's very much reminiscent of Kes. You get a first-hand insight into the bleak and dull existence those kids in Glasgow have to endure. James is suffering from thorough disillusion. The sequences when you actually see him smile - which are two or three maybe - are thus real highlights of the movie. He is the one who bears the emotional burden of the movie. I particularly liked the scene when he was lying on the sofa and his young sister places herself next to him. The other highlight was when he took the bus and found this solitary house and the grain field, where he experienced some kind of relief from his tough life. The ending was ambiguous. I suppose he actually did drown himself - and the last image show his dreams of his family moving away from their bleak existence towards a brighter future - a future he thinks is only possible without him. Just think of the young girl holding the Miro towards the sky - and then you see James' face. And you see him drown again right when the credits start.

This is a powerful movie about a boy who is relentlessly ground down by the oppressive circumstances of his life. Poverty, neglect and rejection are his personal environment, set within a larger picture of crumbling social structures and economic chaos. Other characters do reach out to him in various ways, including sexual, but their overtures, as mostly everyone's, are rooted in their own needs. The protagonist has learned from hard experience to be suspicious of the self-involved people around him, so he's unable to respond to any of these "half a loaf" offers. Even the fact that this is a movie IN English that requires English SUBTITLES contributes to the sense of alienation. This film is drama, not entertainment. Of course I can't tell you about the ending, but I will say that I had to rewind the tape and watch it again just to make sure I had really seen what I'd seen. I won't soon forget "Ratcatcher."