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Critics find Ratcatcher to be hauntingly beautiful, though its story is somewhat hard to stomach.
All Critics (38) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (32) | Rotten (6) | DVD (4)
Some may find such wrenching realities shocking, if not reprehensible. Others may glean meaning in their starkness -- a meaning that transcends the film's despair with the power of its truth. Jul 21, 2005 | Rating: B
Some may find such wrenching realities shocking, if not reprehensible. Others may glean meaning in their starkness -- a meaning that transcends the film's despair with the power of its truth.
Bruce Westbrook
Ramsay's imaginative shot-making gifts make for a sublime result, creating a different sort of magical realism than we're used to seeing. Aug 15, 2002 | Rating: 4.5/5 | Full Review…
Ramsay's imaginative shot-making gifts make for a sublime result, creating a different sort of magical realism than we're used to seeing.
Kenneth Turan
In any good film, the opening shot is telling, and Ratcatcher is a very good film. Mar 22, 2002 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…
In any good film, the opening shot is telling, and Ratcatcher is a very good film.
Rick Groen
Lynne Ramsay bears watching. But when we talk about advances in the art of movies we have to be talking about leaps of feeling, not just leaps of technique. Dec 19, 2001 | Full Review…
Lynne Ramsay bears watching. But when we talk about advances in the art of movies we have to be talking about leaps of feeling, not just leaps of technique.
Charles Taylor
Ratcatcher goes straight to the head. Oct 19, 2001 | Full Review…
Ratcatcher goes straight to the head.
Marta Barber
Ramsay tells much of the story through a series of images, each more marvellous than the last. Feb 23, 2001
Ramsay tells much of the story through a series of images, each more marvellous than the last.
Peter Howell
Gritty yet beautiful coming-of-age film too dark for kids. Jun 14, 2012 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
Gritty yet beautiful coming-of-age film too dark for kids.
Brian Costello
This is often a stunningly, grimly beautiful film, but one that leaves a bitter aftertaste. Dec 30, 2006 | Full Review…
This is often a stunningly, grimly beautiful film, but one that leaves a bitter aftertaste.
MaryAnn Johanson
artful and astonishingly beautiful Apr 29, 2005 | Rating: 4/5
artful and astonishingly beautiful
Rich Cline
Writer-director Ramsay has a deft touch throughout: Her actors all seem natural, and her occasional touches of magic realism...help to soften the blows of squalor. Jul 21, 2004 | Rating: 5/5
Writer-director Ramsay has a deft touch throughout: Her actors all seem natural, and her occasional touches of magic realism...help to soften the blows of squalor.
Luke Y. Thompson
Ratcatcher is an inner-city tragedy that plays its story simply, sorrowfully, and beautifully. Mar 10, 2003 | Rating: 3.5/5 | Full Review…
Ratcatcher is an inner-city tragedy that plays its story simply, sorrowfully, and beautifully.
Kimberley Jones
Done so deftly, with such a exquisitely poetic touch and keen understanding of the paradoxical coexistence of filth and beauty in the world, that you can forgive some of its narrative triteness. Sep 22, 2002 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…
Done so deftly, with such a exquisitely poetic touch and keen understanding of the paradoxical coexistence of filth and beauty in the world, that you can forgive some of its narrative triteness.
James Kendrick
A gritty, realistic, sort of depressing movie, but if you like those kinds of dramas, it's really good. I think it was a good movie.
Super Reviewer
This is a film that has always been highly recommended to me and whilst I believe this to be a film that has portrayed a gritty Drama, with a realistic setting and very natural performances, I seemed to have missed the point to the film. the storyline to me failed to deliver a means to an end, which is such a shame because it's of great quality.
In the garbage strewn and rat infested streets of 70's Glasglow, there lies the rudimentary cinematic climax: that of poverty. For the young and still slightly innocent James, his downward spiral into depression starts with the death of a friend, possibly at his own hand. As the film progresses, the gritty reality of living in a slum, smellier than usual thanks to a garbage strike, becomes all too hard for him, and he frequently escapes to a model home in the country. Though he is tormented by a group of spiteful teenage boys, he does meet and fall for a girl who's glasses reside in the canal James fears to enter. The historical context and the ramifications of the many character's actions never fall under plausible. only possible. James' family is awaiting a transfer into a new house as the tenements they live in are being bought and demolished. Hope glides beneath the surface,as they battle each other with hate filled words and violence. The worst horror is the manifestation of bile within James' friend, once a member of the RSPCA, and now he himself kills the rats that infest the garbage piles surrounded them on all sides. Very bleak and dreary, you always wish for something better for James, a protaganist that may be the only unsullied person left.
One of the best British films of the nineties, Ratcatcher is a powerful evocation of the uncertainty and surreal nature of childhood. The film also has something to say about family relationships, death, and the toll poverty takes on people (in this case, in the Glasgow of the seventies). Although the film could be criticised for being fairly slow-paced, I think this is entirely missing the point. The film is more about atmosphere than a linear plot, and the lingering, intriguing glimpses it offers of the young character's life will stay in your memory like a particularly vivid dream. I expect great things of Lynne Ramsay in the future.
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