This is a film blog aiming at analyzing how the director of a film and the history connect with the film its self. The film we are going to go through is called “ratcatcher” which is a feature film directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring William Eddy, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews and others. It was released in the UK on 12 November 1999. It is basically a story which takes place in Glasgow in 1973. For James, the summer is a tough one. The scorching sun is depressing, and the streets are suddenly filled with rotting garbage when cleaning workers strike. Of course, none of that matters. What disturbs James the most is the death of his friend Ryan, whose death is inextricably linked to him.
I would like to introduce the director at first because this blog is aiming at analyzing the relationship between the director and the film. Lynne Ramsay, born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1969, is an English female director. He graduated from the National Academy of Film and Television, one of the world's top 15 film schools, in 1996. In 1999, Lynne Ramsey completed its first secretary works "ratcatcher", the film has been hailed as a model of modern Scottish film, which highly stylized image temperament, realistic depiction, attention to Scotland working-class children with growth of female directors feelings, artistic qualities make director lynne Ramsey, in earnest and reputation in the international film industry.
There are only four short films and four feature films in Lynne Ramsay's directing career so far. Although the number is limited, she has won many awards in Cannes, Locarno and other international film festivals. It can be said that she is a film director with a small number but fine quality. Lynn Ramsey is new period already and have awareness and representation of women in the UK director, one of Britain's new wave of the film, in the background environment and the Scottish national formed its unique film context, at the same time, Lynn extremely personal characteristics of style for the British and even the world movie also injected new blood. Lynne, a photographer by training, has a refined and academic view in the design and shaping of images, and the narration behind the lens also derives a more profound ideological connotation with the use of rich techniques. Once Zhao Yuan(2019) has said that Female directors do have natural advantages in discussing topics such as gender, family and human ethics. It seems that women are born with gender characteristics such as sensitivity and thoughtfulness in character, fraternity and tolerance in motherhood, and softness and weakness in physiology. Women are the most authentic practitioners and chroniclers of life. They live and work in their daily lives day after day, recording the reality and witnessing The Times with their bodies and minds. Because of this, women always have different perspectives and attitudes when they look at problems. Even with the same subject matter, different male and female directors can produce vastly different works. James is so poignant. Although mother and sister are very love him, his father is in a not so in the right way in love him, but the era of working-class families as if is such, evidenced by parents can very good solve the problem of food and clothing of the children had good, they will not think of children may suffer from psychological pressure, children only children in their eyes, understand life and death alive? Nor did they realize that grown-ups were not the only ones who coveted the clean, bright new house. The new home in the wheat field was almost James's only hope in life. When he will be a friend of a soul is carried in the body, his inner fear and guilt in addition to flay the innocent will never have a catharsis of mice, a child of facing the adult will fear of death, is the world in the eyes of James became what a supermassive black hole, finally he also finally cannot bear the weight of life was engulfed in despair.
From my point of view, the story has a straight connection with the history at that times. Jv Wei(2014) mentioned that John Hill, a famous British film researcher, believes that the significance of the rise of the British New Wave lies in the fact that the working class appeared on the screen of British films at a specific "cultural moment" and established a unique way to show their images. As Scotland's largest city and the third largest city in the United Kingdom, Glasgow was once a famous industrial powerhouse. From 1970 to 1980, it plunged into a dark period in history, when the decline of heavy industry led to rising urban unemployment and declining living standards for the working class. After the war, the living conditions of the working class in Scotland did not improve substantially. They were still living in the shadow of unemployment and poverty, and the social welfare was also severely compressed. Lynne Ramsay, who was born in 1969, was a witness to this environment as a child. The background of the strike of the cleaners in the town of Mousetcher is a reference to the urban renovation project at that time. Due to the strike protest of the cleaners, the garbage in the streets is not managed, the streets are filled with huge dirty garbage bags, people are living in such a dilapidated and dirty environment. Not every family is eligible to live in the new government housing on the outskirts of cities, which are subject to strict and detailed evaluation criteria. There are five members of James's family living in a crowded, old and dilapidated house. The three children in the family make the already dilapidated house even more messy. The scattered objects, the coexistence of human and mouse, and the narrow and narrow distance all make the already heavy theme of the movie more depressing. Even more than his parents, James yearned for the chance to live in a new house. For adults, it might just be an improvement in the quality of life, but for James, it was the whole hope of survival. Siegfried Krakauer(1981) once said that Film, by its nature, is an extension of photography, and thus, like the camera, has an obvious intimacy with the world around us. A film becomes real when it documents and reveals material reality. By contrasting children's strong hopes with the realities of real working-class life, Lynne Ramsay makes the underworld of realism seem even more brutal.
In conclusion this blog simply analyzed the connection between the film and the director and the history background Which we can see they definitely have great connections between each other. Thanks for reading.
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