Lynne Ramsay Short Film 'Gasman'

 'Gasman'

Lynne Ramsay is one of our foremost directors and has a very definite style to her films.  I remember seeing her film 'Ratcatcher' for the first time and the impact that it had on me still has resonance. The shots seem to linger and what is in the frame tells the story rather than the script. In fact the broad Glaswegian accents may be quite impenetrable for some audiences but the visual language is more powerful as the audience is left to wonder at the imagery created which is full of meaning.

From 'Ratcatcher' this shot uses focus to linger on the detail and the framing foregrounds the tragedy in a more poetic way than a more graphic representation may.

Here is a clip form her feature film 'Ratcatcher'

From 'Gasman' 

 From 'We Need to talk about Kevin'

 Two shots from 'Gasman' where the detail is focused on and we don't see the whole frame.

Ramsay seems able to make the ordinary exquisitely beautiful through lighting and framing establishing the possibilities of film offering more than a representation of reality. Her films hint at what is often unsaid and the magical realms of the imagination.  We get to see where the minds of her characters go. For instance she unlocks the sense of a quietly borne burden of guilt weighing heavy on a young boys mind. The viewer is left to meditate on this in a series of images which seem to burn an imprint on the viewer's retina in this starkly beautiful close ups which say so much without words.

This analysis of the 'poetic details' in Ramsay's films will help your analysis of the short film 'Gasman'

Wider reading - Sight and Sound magazine

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