Lynne Ramsay’s favourite director of all time: “I love all of his work”
You could argue that there are two halves to Lynne Ramsay’s career: the films she made in her native Scotland, and the ones that take her stories to America. Yet, each one is united by an inherent desire to explore the parts of humanity that often cause discomfort – grief, isolation, social alienation, a brutal coming of age.
Ramsay’s early short films encapsulate these themes perfectly, with Small Deaths picking out three pivotal moments in a young girl’s life which chip away at her innocence, exposing her to the grim realities of the real world. Meanwhile, Gasman, which won the ‘Short Film Palme d’Or’ at the Cannes Film Festival, follows a young girl who comes to realise that her father is not a faithful man.
The filmmaker ultimately expanded on these themes with the stunning films Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, both of which show an innate understanding of how death can turn you inside out. The latter sees Samantha Morton deliver one of her finest performances as a young woman who discovers that her boyfriend has committed suicide, leading her to dismember his body and pass off his manuscript as her own.
The way that Morton’s titular character acts is undoubtedly bizarre, but that’s what grief can do to you. This exploration of identity – it’s hard to work out the ‘real’ Morvern – bears the influence of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, one of Ramsay’s favourite films of all time. In fact, Bergman appears to be her most beloved filmmaker, with Ramsay telling Le Cinéma Club, “I love all of his work.”
It’s not surprising that Ramsay loves Bergman, whose work often deals with similar themes like death and guilt in a particularly meditative way. The Swedish auteur just seemed to know how to dig fucking deep into philosophical matters of being, something that many filmmakers would find too goddamn challenging. Yet, with movies like Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, he interrogated the complexities of existence in a way that draws striking parallels to Ramsay’s similarly introspective approach.
Discussing her love of Persona with the BFI, Ramsay once explained, “A stunning film, deceptively simple on the surface.”
She continued, “The scene where the nurse describes an unexpected sexual encounter on a beach is one of the most erotically charged on film. All played in a monologue – no need for a supporting image. Her words, recalling a moment of true abandon, are powerful.”
Adding, “As the nurse learns her deepest confessions are merely an amusing ‘study’ for the vampirish actress, the film becomes more complex and fractured, an experimental delve into the subconscious as the two women blur and merge. Who is who? And whose story belongs to whom? The stark black and white images are indelible, as are the mysteries in the act of constructing an identity, a history and a film in itself. Its relevance now is uncanny.”
Ramsay also loves The Virgin Spring, which is the closest Bergman ever got to a horror film, with key themes including the loss of innocence and the lingering presence of guilt, which you can see in Ramsay’s work. The spectre of death haunts all of her movies, from Ratcatcher to We Need to Talk About Kevin, inescapable yet executed in an oddly beautiful, philosophical way.
