The Gates of Heaven
I recently watched Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher for the first time and instantly thought of Harmony Korine’s Gummo. Ratcatcher has a very interesting opening scene. Starting with a boy, Ryan Quinne, whose mother is making him tuck his pants into his boots. Next his mother insists that they are going to see Ryan’s father. So, they leave their apartment and start walking, Ryan takes the first chance he gets and slips away to go play by the canal behind the apartment complex. There, he starts to playfully fight with a boy who was skipping rocks. The fight escalates until Ryan is held underwater and ends up drowning. It is then that we learn the main character is not Ryan, instead it is James, the boy who unintentionally killed Ryan.
Gummo takes place in Xenia, Ohio, after a tornado, although it was filmed in Nashville, Tennessee while Ratcatcher takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, during the national garbage strike. So, we see mountains of garbage bags in almost every shot that is outside. The garbage obviously attracts many rats, or “wee mouse.” I’m always fascinated by animals in movies. Terrence Malick uses animals in both Days of Heaven and Badlands in ways that are particularly apparent. In Malick’s films animals are shown in a light, almost pure way, whereas in Gummo and Ratcatcher animals are shown in almost the exact opposite way. Gummo’s main characters literally kill cats and sell their meat to grocery stores under the table. Ratcatcher has a few scenes where animals are killed or shown dead. One of the hardest scenes to watch in my opinion was when Kenny, a friend of James who is implied to be special needs, is showing his pet mouse, Snowball. The local kids who, throughout the film are shown doing pretty abhorrent things to Anne Marie and just in general, start throwing Snowball and essentially playing keep away from Kenny. Eventually, Kenny gets Snowball back and runs back to his room. Next Kenny calls out from his room, and we see Snowball tied to a balloon as Kenny lets go, causing Snowball to float away.
As mentioned earlier Terrence Malick’s first two movies, Badlands and Days of Heaven, are Gummo reminds me of Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick. I first thought of this because Linda Manz stars in both movies. When I started thinking about it more, the similarities became more apparent.
Days of Heaven in my mind is a clean beautiful movie, where Gummo is a dark, vulgar, and ugly movie in a beautiful and poetic way. The use of animals is prevalent in both movies, but in different ways. Gummo's use of animals feeds into the vulgar and ugly theme. Another contrast between the two is around the ending of both. In Days of Heaven there is a fire while in Gummo there is a lot of rain. Overall, though both are beautiful movies.
I’ve heard that Harmony Korine, director of Gummo, took inspiration from Malick and I can certainly see that. Malick’s films are some of the most poetic and conventionally beautiful I have seen. While it may not seem it, Gummo is a poetic film and I would argue it is as beautiful as Days of Heaven, not in the conventional way that Days of Heaven is. Instead, its beauty is less apparent and a little harder to explain, but it’s there. I believe Ratcatcher is the same in terms of beauty and poetic style.
