捕鼠者

《捕鼠者》电影剧照。

电影的开场镜头是一片若隐若现的白色。而后，白色的窗框勾勒出寒冷的乳白色天空。白色的帷幔从上面垂下，包裹了一个正在旋转着的男孩的头顶，帷幔的花边以无声地慢动作扭曲着。外面孩子们的笑声加剧了他的旋转。白袍遮住了他闭着的眼睛，就像新娘的面纱或洗礼帽一样。他似乎又是在水下旋转，尽管阳光已经照亮了他的头顶。屏幕外一只手的敲击结束了他苦行僧人式的白日梦。“看在上帝的份上，看看我的窗帘，”一位30多岁的女人说道。在荧幕的右上角，“捕鼠者”（Ratcatcher）以黑色小字体出现了。薄纱也开始以正常的速度徐徐展开。

苏格兰女性导演琳恩·拉姆塞（Lynne Ramsay，1969）1999年的处女作就是以这样的方式打开，这部电影可以说是20世纪描绘贫困儿童影响最为深远的杰作之一。被帘子遮住的男孩名叫瑞安·奎因（Ryan Quinn，由托马斯·麦克塔格特饰演），他只在银幕上出现了五分钟，之后就在他和他单身母亲杰基·奎因（Jackie Quinn）居住的公共住房外的运河里溺水身亡。故事发生于1973年，在格拉斯哥的一次“清洁工罢工”（dustmen strikes）运动中，垃圾堆积了好几个月，直到最后陆军坦克开过来清理。《捕鼠者》（Ratcatcher）是一部非常罕见的反映贫困的电影，它并没有丝毫的感伤，也没有短暂的煽情。拉姆塞用丰富的图像向童年致敬，让我们在一个充斥着害虫的世界中，得以诗意地瞥见纯真无邪的欢乐与残酷。

《捕鼠者》（Ratcatcher，1999）4K修复版电影海报，导演：琳恩·拉姆塞，片长：1小时34分钟。

由非传统演员扮演的“捕鼠者”的孩子们是本片的关键所在。我们通过他们的眼睛、耳朵和指尖感知到他们与被污染的社区的紧密联系。我们观察到政府对他们住房项目的忽视：楼梯间的油漆剥落，老鼠从地板上爬出来，垃圾袋像黑色、破裂的恶性细胞一样繁殖。而与此同时，地面上粉笔画出的游戏格子照亮了人行道，足球在破旧的鞋子之间滚动，一只脚下的老鼠得到了短暂的友好对待 —— 一块奶酪。一位小女孩把晾衣绳变成了惊险刺激的秋千，在垃圾袋宝座上吃着冰淇淋甜筒。捉老鼠成了五岁以上任何人的日常运动。但《捕鼠者》并没有让我们对这些孩子或他们饱受困境的父母之遭遇感到震撼或怜悯，而是仿佛诉求我们要正视每一个生命的尊严和复杂性，无论它是多么脆弱，多么看似堕落；我们被恳求去见证和珍惜那些凄凉中的美丽。

虽然瑞安的死一直萦绕在叙事当中，但情节在场景安排和人物深度方面却居于次要地位。12岁的主人公詹姆斯·吉莱斯皮（James Gillespie，由威廉·伊迪饰演）是一个敏锐、安静、偶尔也会吵闹的孩子。当瑞安掉入水里时，他是怎么知道他的朋友永远无法上岸？当他的朋友没有跟着他回家时，他为什么决定不回头看看呢？据推测，这些孩子，或者他们的父母都没有学过游泳。这条运河既是一个玩耍的地点，也是一个不合时宜的坟墓，这是永远存在着贫穷危险的一个转喻。

《捕鼠者》电影剧照。

当然，看似简单，甚至是不可避免的事情并非如此。决策是由那些负责人做出的，他们很少（如果有的话）出现在屏幕上。吉莱斯皮一家和许多房客一样，无精打采地希望有一天他们能被安置在一个有现代化厕所和自来水的新公寓里。与此同时，孩子们被训练要对偶尔出现在门口的社会工作者撒谎；在詹姆斯和他的两个妹妹的故事中，母亲（曼迪·马修斯饰）和父亲（汤米·弗拉纳根饰）总是“外出”—— 他们在商店，在酒吧，在任何地方，但从来没有一份稳定的工作。

《捕鼠者》电影剧照。

父亲长期酗酒，母亲尽她最大的努力维持家里的秩序。詹姆斯的妹妹安-玛丽（Ann-Marie，由导演的女儿小琳恩·拉姆塞饰）是一位心直口快且开朗的告密者。一群四处游荡的十几岁男孩折磨着詹姆斯和他的伙伴玛格丽特-安妮（莉安·马伦饰），后者最终出于乏味和恐惧对这群人进行了性服务。“你想摸摸它吗?”在开头的一场戏中，安妮指着自己血迹斑斑的膝盖上刚出现的痂问詹姆斯。詹姆斯愿意，但又不敢，后来，作为一种不寻常的求爱方式，他主动提出要帮她梳理那乱成一团和有虱子的头发。

拉姆塞最令人震惊的成就之一便是描绘了这对伙伴之间纯洁的性友谊——令人吃惊的是，他们的性欲几乎是奇迹般地从未被拿来利用（为了获取某种震撼性的价值）。詹姆斯和玛格丽特·安妮被允许拥有彼此好奇和性感的身体，但这些身体却没有被性化。在他们裸体出现的一个场景中，在詹姆斯进行虱子处理后，就好像摄像机正在尽一切可能来中和视觉内容 —— 四分之三的镜头捕捉到了她肘部以下的身体，玛格丽特·安妮有条不紊地脱下衣服去洗澡，背对着镜头。在她的右边，詹姆斯正低头盯着手里的那块药皂，偶尔偷瞄她一眼。为了更好地帮她洗头发，他脱下衣服进入浴室，一场水战随之而来，双方在对方的鬃毛上涂上泡沫，变成莫西干发型。“我要小便，”她说着走出去上厕所。詹姆斯继续向她泼水，听到她的小便声咯咯地笑着。在最后一个镜头中，她也在回笑，画面有意地不去捕捉她的乳房。

国家的权力，或者更准确地说，它对权力的放弃，就像从孩子们头上剔除的虱子一样，潜伏在表层以下。在这个住宅空间中，没有人因为他们悲惨的处境而受到指责或被妖魔化，也没有人指责或妖魔化那些自我疗愈的方法，正是这些方法才可能会让角色活到下一天。电视屏幕上的记者的口音如此清脆，如此英国，想到他们是来自同一个国家，这样的反差真是令人惊讶，“虽然双方都不愿意公开这么说，很明显，正是威胁要动用军队才使罢工领导人做出让步。清理这堆垃圾意味着清洁工将获得数千英镑的奖金和加班费，这是对他们罢工九周的补偿......”（记者）

詹姆斯和玛格丽特·安妮坐在沙发上看着午间新闻，用着和身型不搭的浴巾吃着白面包片。他们一声不吭，同时眨着眼睛；电视里描绘的内容看似与他们无关，实则又与他们息息相关。在整部《鼠捕者》中，公屋居民并没有对系统性的不公表现出积极的愤怒，而是故意漠不关心，他们知道他们的一言一行都不会产生巨大的改变。在电影的背景下，当涉及到他们个人生活的结果时，这种可怕的剥夺权利赋予了他们一种纯真性，或者至少是无罪的感觉。

反映城市（或郊区）白人贫困的电影作品少得可怜，对于任何有才华或良好职业道德的人来说，阶级只是一个可渗透的边界——《捕鼠者》完全拒绝对穷人进行道德化或陈词滥调式的说教，这可能会让人感到非常不安。通过这种方式，拉姆塞为肖恩·贝克（Sean Baker，1971，美国导演）2017 年的《佛罗里达乐园》（The Florida Project）等影片奠定了基础，后者记录了一个年轻女孩与她的性工作者母亲在迪士尼世界外的一家汽车旅馆里生活的经历。

《捕鼠者》电影剧照。

就像在《佛罗里达乐园》中一样，一个孩子能想象出一个比现实世界更奇妙、更温馨的世界，这是《鼠捕者》的核心精神——这种精神在一个令人愉快的分离场景中显现，一只小白鼠和一个红气球不仅逃离了公寓住宅，而且完全离开了地球。拉姆塞本人回避了这样一种假设，即这部电影对贫困的残酷描述必然会被贴上一个真实的标签。她在1999年接受《IndieWire》采访时表示：“很多人都把这部电影误解为社会现实主义，但我不这么认为。我尽量避免那些陈词滥调。说实话，我试图深入到这些场景的心理，探究为什么我们要这样拍摄，为什么我们要这样看待它，试着深入了解它的表层之下，深入到这个男孩（詹姆斯）的内心深处。”

在《鼠捕者》虚幻的最后一幕中（既华丽又极度令人印象深刻），吉莱斯皮一家行进在一片开阔的田野上，这也是詹姆斯在参观一处空置的房屋建筑工地之前，曾逃到郊外的那片田地。父亲在前面引路，抬起一张白色的小沙发，大麦沙沙作响。母亲抱着一个白色的娃娃屋。白色的天空到处是鸟儿。在队伍的后面，安妮-玛丽凝视着一面镜子，镜子里捕捉到了她在阳光下闪烁的脸庞。在她身后，她的哥哥坐在椅子上。在电影的最后，当看着他所爱的人朝着一个更美好的家园的希望前进时，詹姆斯第一次张开嘴微笑了。

《捕鼠者》电影剧照。

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In the two short films, it’s very impressive how simple the settings are, especially in SMALL DEATHS. Lynne made a bold choice to put three moments together to make a short film. These are three tiny moments at different stages of a girl’s life. But there’s a cohesion between these moments. As Lynne said in the interview, these are tiny moments when things will never be the same for kids. These kind of tiny moments play big roles in everyone’s childhood, as they influenced how we see the world, what kind of person we will become. It touches the audience in the short because they are so authentic, personal and emotional and people feel connected, even though Lynne cares nothing about rules such as “character’s wants/problems/arc” or “active protagonist”. The short focus only on the three moments, elaborating the moments and simplifying the settings as much as possible. If in a traditional way to tell the story, it would start much earlier to introduce the characters, show informations, back stories, set up conflicts. It shows the director’s confidence to just show what’s really necessary to tell the story. And it works very well.

GASMAN is told in a more traditional way with beginning, middle and end. It’s engaging throughout the whole film, focusing on the kid’s perspective, as the conflict progresses. I like how the conflict peaks at the middle part when the two girls fight for daddy’s knee. Lynn didn’t dramatized the conflict but it feels real and authentic with the two girls’ natural performance. I like the beautiful images in the end when they are on their way home and both the two girls are on daddy’s shoulder, and when the two complicated families walk toward opposite directions on the railway. Everything seems back to normal again but the visual and the girl’s attempt to throw the rock tells so much about the situation and the dynamic under it. I also think the beginning scene when the two kids were asked by their mom to dress at home is a smart way to level the story up, even the story is completed without it. It shows how the family looks like normally before the discovery. It could start when the father and two kids coming out from the house but seeing and getting an idea of the origin family raises the stake when the protagonist girl found that another girl is taking her father away from her. And Lynne’s choice to show the scene partly in the frame is also smart to give the audience just the enough information.

RATCATCHER maintains the subjectivity from kid’s perspective, the use of details. But as a feature film it raises the topic to social problems includes people’s living condition. I think the environment of the neighborhood is built up very efficiently in the movie and becomes a crucial character itself. The main spaces include the polluted river, yard full of black garbages and rats, and the street in front of houses where kids play together. The whole film goes back to these three spaces a lot of times and conflicts happen at these places to show how people’s lives are around and influenced by these pollution, garbages and rats. The only other space shown in the movie is the newly built houses James went by buses, as a comparison. Those scenes on the buses as James move around excitedly also works meaningfully as a transition to the new world.

But I think it doesn’t work as good as in the shorts in terms of building the protagonist emotional journey. It sacrifices when the director wants to tell the story from a bigger scale. The character is not as authentic as in the shorts. Some of his action feels out of the filmmaker’s intention. For example I don’t think James’s desire to live in the new house, and his motivation to take suicide is built up authentically in the film. I think the story is already strong enough to show these characters’ lives, including how James looks for help from an older girl who’s bullied by other kids after accidentally killing another boy, and his friendship with this idealistic boy named Kenny, and the complicated relationship of James’ parents. All these are amazing characters with believable problems and emotion. In the end when it cuts from the dream house to James suicide, it looks like an artistic but political image to show the comparison purposefully. But I don’t feel connected well with the characters. I would prefer the film end with the parents’ relationship and James and the girl’s relationship, kept within the characters, while life will keep going without significant change.

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

这是一部非常耐看的电影，我也是看了三四遍才逐渐发现其中的魅力。这部电影非常赤裸地展示了琳恩曾经作为摄影师的扎实功底，大部分的场景都将运动的画面呈现出类似静止的状态，这就巧妙地通过对时间的攫取来使某个瞬间得以延长，这种近乎静止的时刻就非常容易让人们把握事物的存在，哪怕是暂时的。比如影片的最后James的笑容仿佛被定格在麦田中央，让人们能够抓住那一刻James“愿望实现”的幸福感。同时这种类似摄影的拍摄手法还能改变影片的叙事速率，从而带来一种创伤性重复的状况，那些近乎静止的场景就是在反映影片叙事中创伤反复中的暂时中断感。简单来说，James作为一个孩子，在瑞恩死了以后会一直处在负罪感之中，而这些几乎静止的画面就好比一个休息站、庇护所，让他能喘口气或是感受其他美好的情感，我觉得这种以拍摄手法的不同来切换叙事速率，从而给观众带来不同情感体验的方式真的非常巧妙。比如34:20这里James趴在Margaret-Ann身上的俯拍镜头，画面和人物都近乎静止，但总能感受到画面中散发的不掺杂质的单纯的幸福感，这大概就是James所渴望的庇护所吧，平静而舒心；42:23这个James站在麦田中央的中景镜头，满屏的暖色调溢出James来到梦幻之地的放松与舒心…这些不仅是James的休息站，也能让观众从压抑的情绪中得以喘息。虽然画面给人以静止的感觉，但里面的情感确实交织涌动，让人扎身于其中，随其波动。