捕鼠者

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.