This essay will comparatively examine how the theme of loneliness is articulated in Eternity and a day (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1998) and Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999). Loneliness is an emotional feedback that arises from a lack of spiritual connection. As a result of the awakening of reason, humans have the ability to distinguish between ontological and extra-ontological objects, thus creating loneliness in the expectation and desire for feedback from the object (Fromm, 1941). In a broad context, loneliness is usually considered to be an emotion of frustration due to being alone. However, being alone is not necessarily lonely, and being with others is not necessarily not lonely. Loneliness is more like a physical and emotional experience of mind and body caused by the individual's own reflections, depending on the individual's differences. Both Eternity and a Day and Ratcatcher are films about the individual solitary journeys of their protagonists, and even though neither of them is always alone, what runs through the whole film is the loneliness and unappreciated independence within the protagonists. The difference is that Eternity and a Day shows the loneliness of an old man facing death alone when he is forced to face the end of his life, while Ratcatcher focuses on the loneliness of an adolescent who is unable to cope with his emotions during his undeveloped adolescence under the influence of a hostile external environment, leading to his own demise. While both end in death, Eternity and a Day focus on the loneliness of the protagonist as he learns of the end of death, while Ratcatcher focuses on the loneliness that causes the protagonist to actively choose the path of death. Both films are art films, and they share the art film emphasis on the language and aesthetics of cinema, with a more subjective authorial will to express, a slow-paced narrative with poetic scenes and metaphors, and a focus on exploring the inner workings of some of the evanescent protagonists (Carlota, 2016).
These two films that are also art films, but Ratcatcher is new realism film and Eternity and a Day is modernist dedramatization film. In that way, these two films express the loneliness of protagonists in completely different ways. The two films will also explore the two extremes of age: childhood and old age, but both of them accomplish the loneliest expression of life - death - and trace the origins of life through loneliness.
The loneliness in Ratcatcher is hidden, latent and undercurrents. Ratcatcher is a new-realist film, poetically presents the angry young men of the rebellious 60s working class generation in Britain to the outright unemployed in the 90s (Carlota, 2016). With a romantic audio-visual language that turns the camera on dirty rubbish dumps and poor neighborhoods, balance the 'documentary realism' with 'romantic atmosphere' and ‘kitchen sink’ (the drabness of the set- tings) withe the ‘poetic’ quality (Higson, 1984). Following the Ratcatcher, the rising image of the boy wrapped in layers of gauze curtains sets the cold tone of the film and the blinded image of the protagonist. The layers of white gauze are like a cocoon of worms, suggesting rebirth and metamorphosis. But also, like a mummy, it suggests loneliness and death. The loneliness here is not obvious; the audiences can vaguely detect it from the hints in these images, but it is soon washed away by the plot that follows, as the crowded homes, the lively neighborhoods, the playmates of the same age all show: the film is filled with different characters and there seems to be no loneliness in the crowd. As the plot progresses, however, the audiences comes to realise that this is a depressing environment for teenagers to grow up in. The dark streets are littered with rubbish, children's lives are often in danger when they play in the muddy river, the lives of young girls and teenagers are filled with sexual debauchery and obscene language, James's poor family's incompetent and masculine father and mother are incompatible, and the family's attitude towards the different children varies greatly... All these scenes suggest the isolation of the protagonist and his loneliness is suppressed until he drowns in the river at the end of the film, when the atmosphere of loneliness spreads with the silence of the images. The loneliness leads directly to James's psychological inability to cope with the bitterness that results in the subject's self-chosen demise. Realism is therefore expressed through the use of a breathtaking plot that allows the audience to understand the underlying meaning of loneliness and to consider the events and contexts that cause it.
In contrast, loneliness is explicit, everywhere, and explicit from the very beginning of Eternity and a Day. With the murmurings of a child's poetry and accordion music, the viewer follows a long shot exploring the interior of a seaside house as Alexander, the protagonist with terminal cancer, rises from his rocking chair and subsequently embarks on a solitary journey alone. Throughout the film Alexander walks alone on the foggy Greek seaside. His conflicts with his daughter, his visions of his dead wife and his anxiety about reaching the end of his life are always with him. He is accompanied only by a dog, which is eventually entrusted to someone else. The solitude of the protagonist alone creates a palpable sense of isolation, and the viewer can easily tell that this is a film about an old man facing the loneliness of death alone at the end of his life. Just as Tarkovsky in Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) used the simple language of the camera to show the loneliness of an individual facing unknown dangers, Angelopoulos's sophisticated use of long shots set to sad orchestral music creates a poetic atmosphere, with rigorous compositions, vectorised camera movements and endless fog showing Alexander's isolation from others (Bordwell, 2005). The Modernist dedramatization film weakens the plot's expression of loneliness in favour of a more situational and pictorial one, using symbols to convey the feeling of isolation and the protagonist's inner loneliness.
Even though there are differences in the way the two films express the feeling of loneliness, the philosophical reflections and personal profiles of the directors on loneliness conveyed through the two protagonists of different ages are similar. Both films convey that loneliness exists objectively, in a universal population, and that human beings are lonely because of a rational awakening to the existence of the object, and the subject is lonely. The isolation of nature from man arises when the subject realises that the existence of the object is different from itself, which then rises to the spiritual isolation of man from man. This isolation means that the greater the difference between the subject and other objects, the stronger the sense of isolation/ loneliness felt by the subject.
James in Ratcatcher has differences with his relatives, friends and loved ones. James desires to work hard to achieve his wish to live in a big house, while his relatives are lazy and only want to rely on social welfare for a nice house and are not willing to fight for it. James wants to protect the rats, while his friend kills them as a protected animal. James desires to maintain a platonic love with Margaret, while Margaret is always deep in carnal desires. The difference in subjectivity created by these surrounding people leads to a sense of isolation for James, creating a loneliness strong enough to withstand death, resulting in his self-destruction and a struggle to return to the original purity of life after it has been poisoned by circumstances.
In the same way, in Eternity and a Day Alexander disagrees and differs from those who are still alive, he is caught in the memory and re-enactment of time and space, and it is as if eternity is recreated in the course of a day. In this rift in time and space he catches his only hope, the sudden appearance of the Albanian boy. The boy as a marginal figure makes Alexander feel a similarity, they are both wandering bodies with nothing to fall back on, at this point loneliness is greatly diminished and replaced by Alexander's care for a surrogate father (Rappas & Phillis, 2020). But when Alexander wishes to return the boy to the borderline, the two subjects once again become different, and the uncertainty on the other side of the border leads to the boy's fear, at which point Alexander returns to the loneliness created by the difference in thinking between the subjects. The conflicting nature of the scene and the contradictory struggle of the characters' psyches are intensified by the crossers hanging on the barbed wire fence in the wind and snow, whose lives and deaths are unknown. At this point they return to the bus station, and Alexander is not relieved of his loneliness by the boy's company. On this day at the end of his life, the poet he has been pursuing all his life, the wife he misses day and night, and his mother in her sick bed all keep surfacing and replaying themselves, and he has developed a sense of isolation from the real world. The loneliness of facing death alone is a kind of openness to accept the return of life to its original origin after experiencing the loss of other people's lives. As in Ratcatcher, the role of loneliness in the production of death is overwhelming, counteracting the fear of death. The authors of both films therefore convey the same philosophical reflection on loneliness; the loneliness caused by the spiritual isolation of the subject can even transcend the limits of death and return to the origin of life.
In sum, Eternity and a Day and Ratcatcher are both slow-paced art films that focus on the author's self-expression, with poetic shots conveying the director's self-reflection on loneliness. While Ratcatcher focuses more on the integrity of the narrative structure and the clarity of the timeline, Eternity and a Day focuses on the weakness of the plot with the language of the camera and poetic intent, presenting the unique charm of the film under the interlocking timeline. However, both films express the awakening of human rationality, where the difference between self-consciousness and the other creates a sense of isolation, a sense of isolation that gives rise to loneliness, which becomes an eternal proposition beyond death. In Eternity and One Day, solitude is one day longer than eternity. Among the Ratcatcher, solitude is buried in the golden fields of wheat that can never be reached.
Reference：
Angelopoulos, T. (Screenwriter/ Director). (1998). Eternity and a Day [Motion Picture]. France: Paradis Film.
Bordwell, D. (2005). Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
Carlota, L. (2016). Senses of Cinema. Ratcatcher
Higson, A. (1984). Space, Place, Spectacle. Screen 25 (4/5), pp. 2-21.
Rappas, I. A. C. & Phillis, P. E. (2020). ‘“Do the right thing”: encounters with undocumented migrants in contemporary European Cinema’. STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA, 17(1), 36-50. doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2018.1498611
Ramsay，L. (Screenwriter/ Director). (1999). Ratcatcher [Motion picture]. France: Pathé Pictures International
Fromm, E. (1941). Escape From Freedom. Freedom - a question of psychology
