Rat Film

It really takes a lot of nerve to make a film like this, divining a parallel between rat life and urban governance, but it really works. With Biden as President, it's timely, too!

Only about half of this film was about rats. Other parts were just rambling with long stretches using Google street views and aerial views of Baltimore. It was like it wanted to transport the viewer into some kind of video arcade or game. Statistics were cited over and over that had little correlation with rats. There was little in the way of relating these stats to rats.

This film was so annoying because it would have some segments on rats - and then veer completely off topic. It even showed what looked to be NASCAR racing!!

Even though this was hardly over an hour it just dragged on. Not very illuminating.

"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 problem." Although this film is excellent, it may be unsettling for some viewers who prefer the lineal, traditional documentary film. This film is not the same old thing, and even the title is rather misleading.

Yes, we have stories about rats in Baltimore, rat catchers, people with rats for pets... and did you happen to know that rat poison came from Baltimore after it could no longer be obtained from Germany? But it also covers the history of segregation in Baltimore and how the system perpetuates itself. Theo Anthony, the director, sees the film as a series of tangents and tangents on tangents that all relate. Viewers may see it, maybe not. Sometimes the tangents get really out of hand... the forensic science sections are fascinating, and are worthy of a look, but how do they relate to rats or any of this?

This was one of the worst films a SXSW Film Festival. The audience found it confusing and almost incoherent. The experimental attempt kept jumping around from rats to video games to the sociology of race in Baltimore to some sort of attempt to recreate crime scenes. None of these parts seemed to be connect to the other parts. It just jumped from one part to another without any real transition or clear narrative. The narration was also done in this strange voice that sounded almost like a computerized voice. There were individual scenes and characters that seemed somewhat intriguing particularly as they related to the human relations with rats. Some people wanted to exterminate them while others treated them as pets. But none of it connected in this poorly edited mess of a movie. This was film is sadly a failed experiment.

I was skipping forward a lot as many of the scenes are lingering for much much longer than they're worth. And I'm not one of the commenters here who were disappointed that this film is not really about rats. It has an important topic of history of segregation, systemic racism of urban planners and then private sector and how it didn't disappear today. I can see attempts to stimulate thinking about different scales switching from the rat scale: first rat houses, limiting their freedom of movements in the living room with reinforced plastic walls, then talk about redlining in Baltimore, preventing development of the poorest neighborhood, reinforced borders - red areas stayed red. Miniatures of death scenes, then human size forensics training rooms. I can see the potential. But the important informations/feelings this document has given me could be easily edited down to 15 minutes that would have more intense impact on me, this felt like listening to someone talking with half a minute pauses after each word.