It’s a strong debut from Ramsay; grim, stark, certainly fits the sub-genre poetic realism but mainly she’s started her narrative trend here and has a clear talent for arresting imagery
Lots of squalor, the mise-en-scene loaded with filled garbage bags in the street
Starts with suffocating in curtain much like Phoenix in the plastic in You Were Never Really Here in 2017
Like all of Ramsay’s films the central character is in a traumatic experience (death of a child here that he is the cause of) and the rest of the film with float along with him—he’s not as zombie-like as the Samantha Morton, Tilda or Phoenix characters
It’s a montage film- built in the editing room
Much of it is silent cinema- strong photography
Very grey coloring- washed out
Sunless Scotland—grim
Impenetrably authentic dialogue
Part neo-realism (like Rossellini in WW2 rubble in Germany War Zero) and part magical or poetic realism- we have, at 40 minutes in, the character hop on a bus to a nice empty house with a field—we also have a mouse tied to a balloon going off of the planet earth to what sounds like the music from Terrence Malick’s Badlands
A sweet mother and an angry drunk father
Similar to 2000’s George Washington from David Gordon Green
We have a great shot at that house in the country of the window frame with the wheat field in the background- Ramsay uses the window as her own frame- like Renoir did- she goes back to this at least three times- gorgeous
Is the ending a dream escapes or real? Did he drown or was he saved? Ironic smile
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