I recently watched Lynne Ramsay\u2019s latest film Die My Love, the first she\u2019s released in about 8 years, so it\u2019s appropriate to do a ranking of one of my all-time favourite directors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
5 – Die My Love<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to preface this by saying I really like all of Ramsay\u2019s films, it\u2019s just that some Ramsay films are better than others. Ramsay\u2019s latest entry features a career best performance from Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert Pattison\u2019s really good too. You\u2019ve got some signature Ramsay traits with blood symbolism, close-ups of angst-ridden facial expressions, characters filmed in the edges of frames\/behind objects, trauma etc., but the main thing that holds this joint back from a higher position is just how oblique that trauma symbolism is (if you\u2019ve seen this joint and you\u2019ve seen the burning forest symbolism, you\u2019ll know what I\u2019m talking about). Still, it’s beautifully filmed and beautifully orchestrated as all Ramsay films are, and it remains a fantastic film in my book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4 – Ratcatcher<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramsay\u2019s debut feature film follows the internal crisis of a young boy after he accidentally kills a friend during a playfighting accident. Whoa there, that\u2019s not a spoiler, that\u2019s just the plot. If there\u2019s much plot to speak of at all. Which suits me. This is Ramsay in full Ramsay mode with her use of non-actors and slow, ruminative pacing. Ratcatcher established Ramsay as an arthouse darling in the cinematic world, and it perhaps led to a backlash from fans when she apparently went more mainstream with We Need To Talk About Kevin. I don\u2019t follow that shiz, btw, but\u2026anyway. This is a wonderful debut that refuses to draw conclusions about the nature of grief and guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3 – We Need To Talk About Kevin<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here it is, the one that divided the Ramsay crew. I don\u2019t care about that nonsense. I love this flick, and I think Ramsay adapted it in a really intriguing way from Lional Shriver\u2019s source material. It\u2019s an exceptional debut for Ezra Miller (despite the fact they\u2019ve been cancelled for a while now, I can separate the art from the artist in this particular case), Tilda Swinton\u2019s typically great in it as Kevin\u2019s complex and inscrutable mother, as is John C. Reilly as Kevin\u2019s delusional father. It\u2019s still weird to see John C. Reilly in serious roles after witnessing him in mostly comedic roles, but hey, he\u2019s good. Plus Ramsay does a lot a weird and wonderful things with food symbolism with this film. Especially the colour red. Great stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2- Morvern Callar <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to the expressive face, something your humble narrator is a big fan of, you\u2019d be hard pressed to find a better examples in the British Isles than Samantha Morton. Straight away from that weird and engaging opening scene, this is a gal that you want to focus on. You never find out what\u2019s going in her head, and that\u2019s awesome. Even with those flashing lights at the end of the film, you\u2019re no more illuminated than when you see her by the flashing Christmas tree lights at the start. I prefer it to the source material as well for this precise reason. This is a film about watching rather than understanding in the traditional sense of loads of expositional speech. And maybe you might not like it because of this fact. But I do, and that\u2019s what matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1- You Were Never Really Here<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the here\u2019s the big one. The holy grail. Probably my favourite performance from Juaquin Phoenix, which is saying something, because he\u2019s a brilliant and enigmatic actor who\u2019s great at playing disturbed individuals, whether more theatrically (see: Gladiator) or less theatrically (see: The Master). The main quote you\u2019ll see on posters for this joint will be describing it as a \u201821st<\/sup> Century Taxi Driver\u2019; while it\u2019s got the bare bones of this structure in its plot, it\u2019s so much more than that (no offence Taxi Driver, I love you too). It\u2019s a deeply psychological study of a deeply disturbed individual, and it doesn\u2019t waste time explicitly detailing the reason behind this emotional state, you\u2019ll just have to put that together from the fractured flashbacks and Johnny Greenwood\u2019s equally fractured, genius orchestral score. It\u2019s essentially a perfect pastiche of the silent hero\u2026but, if I go talking down that direction, in a similar fashion to The Simpsons\u2019 Handsome Pete, I\u2019ll be dancing\/typing for hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2570( ^o^)\u256e\u2570( ^o^)\u256e \u250f(-_-)\u251b\u2517(-_- )\u2513 \u2570( ^o^)\u256e\u2570( ^o^)\u256e \u250f(-_-)\u251b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently watched Lynne Ramsay\u2019s latest film Die My Love, the first she\u2019s released in about 8 years, so it\u2019s appropriate to do a ranking of one of my all-time favourite directors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}