After much ballyho, Cinecultist watched Lynne Ramsay's first feature length film, Ratcatcher and loved it. Like Movern Callar, her other film released last winter which CC thought was one of the best thing she'd seen all season, Ratcatcher shows us a slice of working class Scotland, this time set during the garbage collector's strike in the '70s. Like Kubrick, Ramsay was a photographer before she became a filmmaker and it really shows in her exquisite shot compositions. The one where the young protagonist jumps through a window and runs out into a field of dry grass reminds CC a bit of Citizen Kane, only better, as the color just swallows you up. A word to the wise though, watch the film with the subtitles on. This seemed to be the default from the Criterion copy CC rented from Netflix but despite the film being in English, its necessary with the characters thick Glaswegian accents. Everything little is wee in this film and such forth. CC prides herself on being able to understand Brad Pitt in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but Ratcatcher would have been an unintelligible mess with out the subtitle translation. A beautiful mess but a mess nonetheless.