Ratcatcher

Lynne Ramsay's directoral debut is in some ways one of the finest meditations on childhood ever put to film. It ranks up there with Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Bresson's Mouchette, or any of Spielberg's films on childhood, though is still probably slightly inferior to any of the above. Ramsay has a way of uniquely combining the real with the surreal to find the perspective her of adolescent protagonist, as well as a visual style in the vein of Terrence Malick, or at least David Gordon Green (again comparable, though inferior). It takes place in Scotland during the 70's where a poor area of tenement housing is becoming dangerously unsanitary thanks in part to a garbage workers strike. Trash is piling up, polluting the land and the water, and becoming a haven for rats. James lives with his occasionally drunkard and mildly abusive father, his caring though somewhat negligent mother, and his two sisters who both seem to get a little bit more parental attention than he does. We see the world as he does -- his friend, the local bullies, his family, and his kind of girlfriend who also gets picked on by the bullies. There's some magic in the film and depth to even the secondary characters which helps to make this one of the most memorable of its kind.