A beginner’s guide to the films of Lynne Ramsay

Trained as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, Lynne Ramsay’s films all have embed­ded in them a deter­mi­na­tion to let the images do all the talk­ing. There’s often an air of mag­i­cal real­ism about her work, as strange images punc­ture som­bre tales of peo­ple deal­ing with the after­math of death, as Ram­say folds poet­ry and fan­ta­sy into even the most mea­gre of circumstances.

Despite the major­i­ty of her films being adapt­ed from nov­els or short sto­ries, the feel­ings of her char­ac­ters are rarely con­veyed through dia­logue. Instead, the edit­ing and the cam­er­a­work infer every­thing we need to know. To cel­e­brate the release of her bril­liant, bru­tal new film, You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here, we’ve put togeth­er a handy primer of Ramsay’s short and fea­ture films.

Ramsay’s grad­u­a­tion film is a series of vignettes intro­duced with almost no con­text, focus­ing on the sto­ries of chil­dren of dif­fer­ent ages deal­ing with fam­i­ly, moments of vio­lence or per­son­al tur­moil. It could be seen as a micro­cosm of Ramsay’s entire fil­mog­ra­phy, a film that most­ly uses image to explore the far reach­ing con­se­quences of dif­fer­ent actions and what famil­ial con­nec­tion means in dif­fer­ent social environments.

This stark fol­low-up cap­tures a day in the life of a hero­in addict recent­ly released from prison. Open­ing on the dron­ing noise of an unseen fly, it’s a film full of harsh noise; the pro­tag­o­nist is large­ly silent and there is no sound­track. Cut­ting between the character’s past and present, Kill the Day shows us some­one strug­gling to regain their agency fol­low­ing addic­tion. The final shot is par­tic­u­lar­ly omi­nous, a sign that the road to recov­ery can feel like an eternity.

Gas­man exam­ines the emo­tion­al state of a young girl through cir­cum­stances that are nev­er spo­ken or ful­ly explained. We know only as much as she does – that there are two oth­er chil­dren that are famil­iar with her dad. We are intro­duced to the char­ac­ters through lin­ger­ing close-ups, and the actions of these char­ac­ters, let­ting us see how they act around each oth­er before we even see one character’s face.

Ramsay’s first fea­ture-length film fol­lows a young Glaswe­gian boy named James after the death of his friend Ryan. With scarce dia­logue and a sub­tle cen­tral per­for­mance, Ram­say lets the cam­era com­mu­ni­cate James’ emo­tions. Images in Rat­catch­er often feel dis­con­nect­ed and dream­like; James’ guilt and grief form­ing an almost hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry haze. That said, the film doesn’t wal­low in mis­ery, with small moments of hope man­i­fest­ing in forms like a hous­ing devel­op­ment, a friend­ship with a kin­dred spir­it, even a rat tied to a balloon.

Set to a boom­ing, mix­tape-style sound­track, Morvern Callar chal­lenges us to sym­pa­thise with some­one whose actions become murki­er with each pass­ing minute. Saman­tha Mor­ton plays Morvern, who, fol­low­ing her boyfriend’s sui­cide, uses the funer­al mon­ey to go club­bing in Ibiza. Ram­say does as lit­tle as pos­si­ble to hold the viewer’s hand dur­ing this beguil­ing char­ac­ter study, ditch­ing the novel’s first per­son nar­ra­tion and leav­ing us to deci­pher Morton’s per­for­mance. The result is a film that’s com­plex and mes­meris­ing in equal measure.

Ramsay’s best-known work to date explores the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship between Eva (Til­da Swin­ton) and her psy­cho­path­ic son Kevin (Ezra Miller). Through­out a dark con­nec­tion between the two is estab­lished through shot match­es of seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant habits. It’s a dis­con­cert­ing and dis­ori­en­tat­ing expe­ri­ence, con­tin­u­al­ly shift­ing between the past and the present, both linked by a visu­al motif of vivid red through­out the film, almost as if Kevin’s hor­rif­ic act has reached back in time.

Ram­say returned to short film­mak­ing in 2012 with this enig­mat­ic and exper­i­men­tal work. Shot in gor­geous mono­chrome by DoP Natasha Braier, Swim­mer is filled with sound effects and dia­logue that appear to be lift­ed from oth­er sources. The clash between the sound and image cre­ates an uncom­fort­able dis­so­nance, a feel­ing which is only strength­ened but the sound­track boast­ing selec­tions from Lord of the Flies and the Prometheus trail­er. A tes­ta­ment to Ramsay’s desire to test the lim­its of cinema’s capac­i­ty for expression.