Attribution: Photo by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash

Smelling a Rat: Review of The Ratcatcher

Attribution: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

During my teaching days, when I was a Home & Hospital instructor and working with students in their homes who were too sick to go to school (these were extended and serious illnesses like cancer or Sickle Cell Anemia or even more exotic diseases like Gill-Bahr Syndrome), I had the opportunity to experience quite a variety of student lifestyles. 

I had one teenaged student—let’s call her Veruca, sort of a spoiled bratty type, who had a pet rat she used to bring out of its cage during our tutoring sessions. It was a gray and white rat and in no way resembled the Norwegian rats I’d occasionally see foraging in city alleys. I’m typically an animal lover, the kind of guy who’ll pet any dog that’ll have me, but for some reason, this rat, who actually had a pleasant demeanor, repulsed me. Maybe I associated the animal too closely with its owner, who had a more of a rattish personality than the rodent itself. She was mendacious, sneaky, and just plain nasty—just like her namesake. And somewhat of a bully. While it might be argued that rats cannot tell a lie, the truth is they are sneaky and nasty and can be intimidating. 

This rattish student came to mind as I was watching one of Wes Anderson’s collection of short films based on the stories of Roald Dahl—specifically The Ratcatcher, currently available on Netflix. Anderson has taken on the tasking of filming four of Dahl’s short stories: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Ratcatcher, Poison, and The Swan after Netflix acquired the rights to Dahl’s collection a few years ago. His quirky production style seems perfectly fitted for the adapting the written word (specifically Dahl’s words) to film.  

Anderson’s beautiful compositions and meticulously detailed color palettes, along with his deliberate and sometimes surreal forays (like the vintage cut-out puppet scenes in Moonrise Kingdom) into sometimes two-dimensional mixed-media, bend cinematic reality into a deeper more reader-like consciousness. He makes sure we know we’re watching a movie and that what we’re seeing is taking a side trip from even that secondary reality. Anderson doesn’t try to mimic reality external to the camera, he uses the camera to extend it into a mostly internal realm.

His style is well-suited to Roald Dahl’s books, that for children’s stories, have an uncommonly dark, frightening, and sometimes sinister side. In stories like The Ratcatcher, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, an undercurrent of mischief, larceny, or just plain evil lie just below the surface of a civilized veneer. Willie Wonka, the kindly candy maker, takes his child guests on a terrifying boat trip, and then transforms (mutilates) four of them before revealing his true, good intentions. Beneath his civilized exterior as a columnist, Mr. Fox is—well, an animal. And so forth.

The Ratcatcher opens with a static shot of a newspaper editor (Richard Ayoade) sitting at his desk in front of his storefront which is flanked by a narrow walkway, an auto shop, and several other buildings. Outside. Very much like a one-act play. He begins the rapid-fire narration, telling the story of his meeting with the Ratcatcher (Ralph Fiennes). The action is set almost entirely in this space and includes only one other character, the editor’s friend Claud (Rupert Friend) and the Ratcatcher himself. 

Unlike many of Anderson’s other works, this short film is shot in muted earth tones, reflecting perhaps a barren sensibility, or an empty emotional landscape. The editor describes The Ratcatcher (as we see him approaching through the narrow walkway) as taking careful steps and not making noise, even on the gravel. The Ratcatcher’s hair is long is gray, his ears small and circular. He has two protruding front teeth as well. Framing the ratcatcher with the characteristics of that rodent gives the tale sort of a fairy-tale quality, not unlike the wolf in Red Riding Hood or The Swan Princess. And, like many of the unpasteurized fairy tales of old, this story descends into the dark side of human nature.

The editor begins quizzing the ratcatcher about his technique, and the latter does not hesitate to tell, in some graphic detail, about the best methods for killing a sewer rat and a farm rat, always iterating that to catch a rat, one needs to think like a rat. And when asked whether one of the rich neighbors has rats, the catcher replies, “Everyone’s got rats.” His stories provide a sort of perverse fascination for both the editor and Claud. 

When his efforts to poison the local rats in the hayrick fail, the catcher states the rats must have something better to eat, and then tries to recuperate his reputation with Claud and the editor by producing a live rat (“I always have a few around me”) and a live ferret (neither of which are, in the best of theatrical conventions—are mimed). He then cinches his belt and deposits both inside his shirt to demonstrate the efficiency of the ferret’s rat-killing ability. 

The catcher then ups the ante and produces another live rat, this one portrayed by a animated puppet. He asks the two men whether they would like to see more. The narrator and Claud are revulsed, but unable to stop themselves, agree. The Ratcatcher then dispatches the rat in possibly the most feral manner possible. Seeing that he has gone too far, the Ratcatcher sneers and leaves the same way he came. Claud and the editor ponder the hayrick, wondering what the rats could possibly be eating. 

A man who is very like a rat, who knows rats as he knows himself, and who is very possibly part rat, makes his living through betraying, hunting down, and killing his own kind. Dahl has taken the symbol of a rat, and through humanizing it, has created an even more dastardly creature than the rodent itself. Rats do not turn on themselves, but the ratcatcher does. In a neat inversion of symbolism, Dahl has taken an (arguably) civilized man, stripped away the outer layers of sophistication, and revealed a creature who is much worse than the vermin he hunts.

Wes Anderson does not treat this story as anything realistic. It is a fable, a fairy tale. When he frames the story in a spoken narrative (taken almost directly from Dahl’s story), the viewer remains one step removed from the material. It is not a world to get lost in. Anderson establishes the understanding that film is not the only reality, that the viewer is responsible for some of the imaginative work, like seeing the rat and the ferret, and suspending disbelief at the artificial quality of the narrative. This is Wes Anderson’s gift. He makes his films vastly entertaining and moving while at the same time making the audience acutely aware it is watching a movie. His works transcend the cinema, literature, the theater, and graphic art. It becomes something entirely new.

The Ratcatcher would not work without the superlative performance of Ralph Fiennes. Part Long John Silver, part Magwitch, and part Fagin, he embodies the cynical working-class Englishman whose true genius—like the rat—is the art of survival. Fienne’s deadpan but menacing delivery, his slouch and beady-eyed awareness, and his sly intelligence are perfectly fitted to this part. It is a brilliant performance. 

This is one of four Wes Anderson productions of Roald Dahl short stories for Netflix. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar was recently reviewed by The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies. If the last two measure up to the first pair, this could be one of Wes Anderson’s masterpieces.

Dahl’s Ratcatcher and my student Veruca the student were peas in a pod. The rats they claimed to know were twice the people they were.