A Film That Learns Itself

A few thoughts on Theo Anthony’s Rat Film (in no particular order)

1. A film that learns itself:
   I saw Rat Film three times in the theater. Once at the Maryland Film Festival last summer and twice when it had a two-week run at the Parkway Theater in Baltimore this fall. Theo Anthony was in attendance at two of the three screenings and each time he described Rat Film as “a film that learns itself.” I think this really gets at the heart of why I like the film so much. It’s not a revolutionary concept; it’s one that could be used to describe most experimental films and quite a few essay films (Rat Film is both of these). I like films that teach me how to look. This is not to be confused with films that are “educational,” but rather films that teach me a new way to see the world. Or, if not entirely new, at least they show me the specific way the filmmaker sees the world. In Rat Film Anthony takes us along with him as he explores the literal and figurative function of rats in Baltimore city. We learn alongside him and this is Rat Film’s greatest achievement.
2. Things fall apart:
   Interestingly, the third time I saw the film it kind of fell apart. I cannot quite tease out why this is, but my suspicion is that it is similar to what sometimes happens when I interview people for a documentary and during the interview I feel like they are saying incredibly coherent things; I am with them in the experience of sharing their story, but when I transcribe the interview I realize they never quite put a coherent sentence together. I am not leveling this as a criticism of the film, but rather I’m marking it as something that is curious about how cognition works. Or, perhaps it has something to do with the cinematic nature of the film. The way the beautifully constructed images and the informative and soothing voice over invite me to get lost in the experience. But on viewing it for a third time the fissures begin to show.
3. Speaking of fissures:
   Using the Google maps/video game interface was a stroke of genius. The moments in which we are moving through Google maps generated images of Baltimore and the maps glitch out, revealing gaping holes, or distorted buildings, were some of the most profound of the entire film. I could not think of a more perfect contemporary visual metaphor for the difficulty in seeing how systems function. When we move slowly and from a distance we can make out the general outline of the thing we seek to understand, but when we try to get up close, or we try to move too quickly, our vision falters. We cannot grasp the thing we seek to inspect more closely. The universe opens up and we’re swallowed in a black hole.
4. Holes:
   When I saw the film for the first time, my partner and I ran into some friends outside the theater. They were complaining about the fact that the film had not neatly tied up all of the threads; there were holes. We immediately exclaimed that this is why we liked the film so much. It presents you with a whole host of information — some of which, in retrospect, you imagine didn’t “need” to be there — and it asks you to draw conclusions. This is also what we do when we teach. Or, at least, this is what we do when we teach well. We teach people to take information and make meaning out of it. Rat Film gives us a lot of information and it asks us to make meaning(s) out of it. Which brings me back to my first comment about the film learning itself. Which we could also write as, “the film learns about itself,” which we could also write as, “films teach us about ourselves.”