They don’t have very big dreams, a very average life with some domestic happiness would be nice. But fate decided otherwise. Cinematic anti-heroes Andrea Arnold (Fishbowl, American honey) And Lynn Ramsay (Mouser, You weren’t really here) They grew up in slums, burdened by trauma, and received no moral frameworks. There is usually little possibility of improvement.
“You don’t come across characters like that very often in cinema,” says Ronald Simons, the Eye programmer responsible for the Arnold and Ramsay retrospective. “These are the people you read about in the newspapers, people who are more or less outside society. At most they are shown in films in which they eventually advance or improve their lives. But that does not happen with Arnold and Ramsay. They simply record; follow their characters with a mind.” Open minded, non-judgmental.
Choosing to have both directors on one program was somewhat practical, as Simons explains: “For a retrospective, at Eye, we usually choose a director with a large body of work, so we can do several screenings and specials. It’s unfortunate that directors with works Smaller people are never discussed in this way. For example, Arnold and Ramsay have only made four feature films, along with some short films and documentaries – but those are great. These directors belong to the pinnacle of current European cinema and deserve a large audience. The choice was “The combination of their films is also evident: they are both British, female, from the same generation, and deal with similar themes. We presented the plan to them, and they responded enthusiastically. Unfortunately, they are too busy with their new films to attend the opening themselves.”
