Lynne Ramsay's bleak yet beautifully photographed debut unflinchingly
portrays life on a Glasgow housing estate during the 1973 refuse collectors'
strike, as seen through the eyes of 12-year-old James Gillespie (William Eadie).
After James's friend falls into a canal and drowns, James becomes increasingly
withdrawn. As bags of rubbish pile up and rats move in, James finds solace in
his friendships with Kenny, an odd boy who loves animals, and Margaret Anne,
a teenage misfit. On Ratcatcher's release in 1999, Ramsay was hailed as one of
the finest new talents in world cinema, and the film attracted enormous
international acclaim.
Annette Kuhn's study of the film, the first to offer an overarching account of
Ramsay's work, considers the director's background and Ratcatcher alongside
her earlier films. Kuhn traces the film's production history in the context of
Scottish media and literary cultures, and its cinematic influences, while acknowledging the distinctiveness of Ramsay's poetic, visionary style.
Kuhn draws on interviews with Ramsay and others involved in the film's
production, and combines this with a close reading of selected passages to
provide an in-depth and illuminating analysis of the film's poetic style and its
aesthetics, including an examination of its construction of a child's world
through a highly distinctive organisation of cinematic space.