Maybe this is stupid ... but I watched this wonderful movie with my girlfriend tonight and we can't agree if James did commit suicide in the end. He jumps into the river and slowly sinks. Then we see him walking across the field with his family too their new house. Is the suicide a dream, or is the new house a dream? I don't know.
shareI thought I posted this here before, but I guess not. I think he did commit suicide(we see him drowning in the background of the credits). Now the question is: Was he watching over his family as they were moving or was he "dreaming" it all up? I think he is wishing what could have been for him and his family, but I don't think they ever moved. His little sister is holding a mirror and in the reflection is the sky, which tells me that he is up there, in heaven. Hope that helps.
shareIt sounds obvious, but personally I think that the filmmaker gives us freedom to end the story in our own way. I know a lot of people want closure and they want a specific reading of the film but Ramsay doesn't want to give you that. I'm sure she has a clear idea about what happens to James but she isn't imposing her own idea on us. She knows that if she did the film would suffer as a result.
My personal response is that James does die and that he will always be under the water on his own. The sequence which shows his family walking across the field is his internal experience, his fantasy of the life he could never have. Maybe it's his heaven - the place he can go to when he dies where he can live a life free from pain and neglect. Ratcatcher may appear bleak but somehow Lynne Ramsay manages to make it incredibly uplifting. She encourages us to dream and to fantasize - to free oursleves from the harshness of reality by using our imagination. She's definitely one of Britain's best directors.
Anyone who is really interested in the end to this movie should compare it to the end of The Piano (directed by another female director, Jane Campion). That film also has a kind of dual ending, one half of which sees the main character, Ada (played by Holly Hunter), drowninging underwater. Campion infers that Ada survives with an upbeat closing sequence, but before the film ends she cuts back to Ada underwater. Ramsay achieves a differnet effect but the link between the two scenes is undeniable and hugely interesting.
And that his wish was to move to a new house ("with a field!").
I liked the mirror to heaven - shot.
Tarantino is Kubrick doing Blaxpoitation
This is another possible reading:
James feels guilty. He believes it’s his fault the family won't get to live in the new house. His suicide is an attempt to "put things to right" - to "atone" for (among other things) the death of the young boy (was Ryan his name?). Perhaps now (he hopes) the family can move to their ideal home, and a better life. It’s a portrait of the kind of "sacrifice fantasy" young impressionable children (particularly those in dire poverty) sometimes feel, especially within communities where guilt (religious guilt perhaps) has much currency. It's not uncommon for children to feel that it's their fault things are the way they are, so if they pay the penalty for their wrong-doing, maybe God will look more favourably on the family.
Just a thought.
sorry just a question guys...
the bit where he comes in and plays with the tights on (i think its) his mums foot is shown twice... now... the kid that drowned at the start... he wasnt the same kid that was playing with all the mice and wanted to be in the RSPCA was he (sorry the kids seemed to look alike)
and another question.. were some of the kids in the family like half sisters? because.. especially with the older girl.. they seemed to be quite seperated.. and the younger girl was calling him her dad.. as if it wasnt the boys too.. but I thnk this may just be the language.. I think I missed a bit through the language... got a bit hard to understand in points..
The kid that drown at the beginning was Ryan Quinn and was not Kenny the dim witted kid that loved animals. I suppose Kenny didn't say anything about witnessing Ryan's death because he thought James was his friend. I also noticed some strange distance between the family members. Like the scene where the older daughter is putting on some lipstick and James says that it belongs to "his" mom. Odd because the way the mother was talking about dancing with her husband before they were married and more specifically the older music they were dancing to seemed to imply they had been together for some time. In any event this is obviously not a film that answers all the questions it raises.
shareI watched this movie with my Irish roommate, who not only understood the dialogue through the heavy Glaswegian accents but explained much of the vernacular to me as well. When the kids speak of "my da" or "my mam" they simply mean "dad" or "mom". It's not meant to be possessive, as it would be in America. Another interesting translation came when James and his mother were comforting Ryan's mother sitting on the curb. The former shouts at James to "Go get my messages!" She means the bags of groceries left on the sidewalk across the road. I'd certainly never have gotten that one on my own!
shareIf anyone needs anything else translated, feel free to ask. Saw this film for the first time last night on TV, had been wanting to see it for ages though. I guess living in Glasgow has it's advantages: i understood everything in the film.
I see that the US version had subtitles? Why don't UK audiences get subtitles for american movies which feature a lot of black gangsta' street talk? I can usually understand most of what they're talking about.
Ratcatcher was a great film though, i had heard that parts of it were filmed accross the road from me, but i couldnt see it in the film. Thought the acting was great, the accents were well done as well, in a lot of scottish drama (especially on television) the accents sound false and 'proper', but this was well done.
Some of the subtitles were just irritating, because you could tell a lot of times that they were just attempting to simplify the dialogue...for example, when someone used the F-word, it was omitted from the subtitle, or when someone used a slang term, it wasn't really translated, just left out.
shareI remember that scene, watching it with my Glaswegian mother and my English father. My dad remarked that the use of the word "messages" would probably not have been something that many people in England would have grasped. Fortunately, Iremembered it from Oor Wullie and The Broons (and, of course, my mother) so I was fine!
But the way the subtitles were handled was interesting. In the version I saw they were produced phonetically, so it came out as "No, ye cannae" instead of "No, you can't" I can see why the subtitles would be needed, though. I've heard people complain they couldn't understand my grandparents!!
Film is about language..parents just don't understand.
I know the next reply explains the possesive use of "my da" ma etc but this may have been an underlying theme. If you look at some of the DVD releases there are the directors other short films which have many similar scenes to this film. There is a short about to groups of kids with the same dad meeting at a christmas party and the two girls getting pssesive about the dad.
I own the criterion dvd of this movie, and I still dont understand the ending of it. At first I thought it was kenny who jumped into the water. It didnt make sense to me that James would jump into the water unless he wanted to kill himself. He was scared to even go in it through out the movie. Then the scene of the family walking throught the field. Im confused, but can someone just tell me whether or not he killed himself?
shareWhoah! Those are brilliant readings. I never really thought of it. That he commited suicide. I love the bit where James looked at the camera and smiled.
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Harry stared at Malfoy. ~ The Unbreakable Vow Pg 321
i think what happened was this:
james jumps in the water. we see him under water, the screen goes black. this is where james starts to black out/die. then we see his family come over the hill, like they are moving into the house. but this is a dream, because why would they walk over a hill instead of just driving there? its meant to be idealistic. also, it looks very much like a funeral procession. then the credits roll, showing james underwater again. i took this as, no, he's really drowning. it was almost there to just cement that he wasn't still alive.
also, it seemed to be foreshadowed in some scenes. when he was in the bathtub in the house in the country and the overhead shot of him on the couch made it look like he was lying in a coffin.
also, the symbolism of the house was amazing. there were so many great aspects of this film.
I totally agree with you, xhopex-1.
You just said what I thought earlier.
Gone fishing... long ago
I just saw the film last night.
When James comes home for the last time, his little sister comes and curls up next to him on sofa. She is/has been crying. I read this - combined with the previous scene where James visited the house but was denied access - as evidence that they didn't get a chance to move away. Well, James doesn't at least, his family might.
I found the final images of drowning James during the credits a bit unnecessary, I would have loved to have seen a wee bit more open ending.
Beautiful film.
i agree, the drowning during the credits did seem a bit pointless- an under water shot without james would have been better.that gorgeous shot of james smiling should have been the last we see of him. but i loved loved loved the movie anyway
shareHe does indeed kill himself in the end. it is nothing more than a dream in his head when he is moving into the new house. under amazon.com descriptions it uses the terms: child suicide.
sharehe does die at the end, throughout the film everyone lets him down, or turns out to be a disappoinment. Kenny loves animals, but kills his mouse, the girl just lets herself be treated like a prostitute, his sisters dont treat him like a brother, and his father is abusive towards him. So James kills himself, i think the field/new home is supposed to be kind of the equivalent of heaven. When he is alive he seems to be free when he runs about the field, its the only time we see him completely care free.
shareQuality film with a great ending. The best films generally seem to have 'unhappy' endings?
Excellent point about when he's lying on the white sofa, how it looks like a coffin. His mum and dad are carrying the sofa across the field at the end in his dream/heaven, almost like it's a coffin.
Also pleased to see Ramsay's short films included in the extras.
as i've said elsewhere, i think it's important to realize the family is walking in the wrong direction in that field sequence in the end. the direction their coming from makes no logical sense, so it is a fantasy.
"Rampart: Squad 51."
I totally agree with irisange101's interpretation. I think it's significant that all love shown to him, finally proves to be empty.
His Father (Step Father?) despises him, at best he has unrealistic hopes for his future?
His Sisters show little more than contempt for him (although at the end, one sister does show some emotion whilst joining him on the white sofa, but this may represent remorse to the oncoming coffin?
His friend Kenny, initially innocent, young and full of ideals, but is soon turned by the cynical mob. That same group of older 'Lads' at first befiend James, but later revile him.
His 'girlfriend' shows him some intimacy, but either acts like a prostitute, or is defiled by the older lads.
Most significant is his mother, who's only real display of mother to son love was when she thought he had been the one who drowned.
The final turning point was his realisation that Kenny had seen him drown Ryan. Now he is caught like a rat, and as he now views himself as vermin, he too must drown.
The end is a surreal dream.
the girl just lets herself be treated like a prostituteShe could've been scared or already been so psychologically damaged that she just used that as a diffusion mechanism. It shows her as unable to escape, which seems to be a running parallel in the movie. The boys should be held accountable for the molesting and not understanding right and wrong, but while watching you did just want to shake her and tell her to fight back or do something. Anything, really. But then they might've just beaten her or done worse things to her. Regardless, saying that she just let herself be treated like that is warped on a few different levels, as it implies it's entirely her own fault, whereas the boys doing the raping in the outhouse played no part. share
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The director commented on Robert Bresson. The ending is basically cloned from Robert Bresson's Mouchette (another bleak story based on being unable to escape from a situation). Yes, wee James committed suicide. The field sequence with his family is his very final thought as he sinks to the bottom of the canal.
Do The Mussolini! Headkick!
Hi All!
Why do millions of people earn their living by being a "lawyer"? Because EVEN LAWS can be interpreted. That is why I like art. It is not a dogma or verdict the artist sets up. It is a dialogue between the unique artist and the unique perceiver. Two persons will never perceive a piece of art in the exactly same way. If a poet uses a metaphor, the word he chose will cause different images in different people according to their biographies and associations with the term. Equal with colours, sounds etc.
I like that I feel allowed to contribute to a film in form of my own perception. I can - according to my mood of the day - feel as well: The drowning scene is a dream (and the field scene is real or both are dreams). When a friend of mine died in an airplane-crash I also tried to imagine how her last seconds were. It is a way of trying to cope with it.
How do you interpret the fact that in Ramsays next film "Morvern Callar" an adult man, named James Gillespie, commits suicide? Unfortunately the corpse didn't show, whether he had Dumbo-ears or not.
Could it ever be that a director loves to play and loves her audience to join in playing too? Do some directors attempt to inspire us rather than to tell us a straight story, which we get, if we are smart enough and which we don't get, if we are too stupid?
I tend to believe that Ramsay is a filmmaker, who supplies us with many images and leaves it up to us to build our own subjective piece of art with the tangram-puzzle-parts in our minds.
I do often wonder, why spectators on imdb film boards want to know "the true meaning" of a scene so often. I just felt like saying that here.
Did you notice that Ryan Quinn's mom moved after his death? She was fast tracked from the Glasgow Tenement to the new country subsidized housing. When wee James lets the housing inspectors in he unwittingly damages the family's ability to move out and his drunk worn down father blames him.
At the end of the film when James returns to the housing addition he realizes that the housing units are ready to go, and earlier in the film you had heard other families had been told they were moving.
James, feeling he was so responsible for it all, the death of Ryan, the loss of their ability to move from the tenement takes the final stand and commits suicide knowing this will enable his family to also be "fast-tracked" to the country.
It was his sacrifice and what he did was his way of atoning for what he thought he had done.
"But it's not for eating. It's for lookin through."
Isn't suicide a sin though? Wouldn't this be on James' mind, that even though he would be escaping his guilt and relieving his family of the baggage, he might not even arrive at "heaven"? I think the images of the family walking though the fields with their furniture are Ryan's last thoughts before he dies, his idea of what could have been, and rebirth.
shareYeah i think he did kill himself, why would they be carrying their stuff to the new house through a field if it wasn't a dream?
I'm disappointed with the film makers for doing this, there is no shame in having a happy ending to a film as otherwise bleak anyway. In films like this it's almost as if they fear loosing their art house credibility if things work out ok for the characters. Life more often works out ok in reality, things do usually get better. People really do sometimes get to move to a better house and sit for a while with the sun on their face.