SummaryAcross walls, fences, and alleys, rats not only expose our boundaries of separation but make homes in them. Rat Film is a feature-length documentary that uses the rat--as well as the humans that love them, live with them, and kill them--to explore the history of Baltimore. "There's never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it's always been a people ... Read More
Directed By:Theo Anthony
Written By:Theo Anthony
Rat Film
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
83
User score
Mixed or Average
5.3
My Score
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Metascore
Universal Acclaim
83
85% Positive
11 Reviews
11 Reviews
15% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Oct 12, 2017
100
There’s a thrilling friction between the smoothly assembled pieces of Anthony’s narrative, and often sparks.
Sep 14, 2017
100
Equal parts disturbing and humorous, informative and bizarre, Rat Film is a brilliantly imaginative and formally experimental essay on how Baltimore has dealt with its rat problem and manipulated its black population.
Sep 21, 2017
88
Rat Film is most compelling when it moves out of the history of Baltimore's civic-planning and pest-control schemes and settles on its denizens, both human and rodent.
Sep 2, 2017
80
[Anthony] turns a concluding sequence of civic pride and good cheer into a brilliantly light-hearted fantasy of grave import, a radical political utopia conjured with a deft artistic flourish. It’s one of the most extraordinary, visionary inspirations in the recent cinema.
Sep 14, 2017
70
What exactly does it all mean? I’m not sure, but it does make for a disturbing and occasionally absorbing watch.
Sep 11, 2017
50
Inherent to director Theo Anthony's misappropriation of the essay form is a conflicting account of precisely which history his documentary seeks to investigate.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.3
56% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
11% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
33% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
Sep 23, 2017
0
"Rat Film" is a fair documentary at its core, but the focus diverts to issues that don't bear any relationship to the central idea. Really, it is a solid 30 minute film that has about 50 minutes of extra padding that doesn't do much more than bore, confuse or irritate the audience. This "essay-doc" is at times captivating, but more often it becomes scattered, self-indulgent nonsense. Nevertheless, this film should be a mandatory part of the curriculum at film schools, to show that having aspirations to be the next Marker or Herzog aren't enough, and if you make a film that doesn't hang together as a whole, you may end up looking like a pretentious fool--like Theo Anthony. One other point: In an interview for the Baltimore Sun, Anthony admitted that instead of filming real people, he "recruited actors to try their hands at rat fishing". Rather than making this clear to the viewer, he just hides behind the claim that his film "is no conventional documentary." What nonsense.
Production Company:
- Memory
Release Date:Sep 15, 2017
Duration:1 h 22 m
Website:
Awards
Sheffield International Documentary Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US
• 2 Nominations
Gotham Awards
• 2 Nominations
