Here
in New York, we have a special relationship with rats. They are our neighbors
and our co-workers. We have elected rats to represent us in the City Council
and up in Albany. We even have a rat for a mayor. Yet, Baltimore seems to think
they invented vermin infestation. We will concede they have exponentially more
urban blight and social pathologies, but we take a backseat to nobody when it
comes to our rat population. Nevertheless, Baltimore takes center stage as the
rat capitol of the world in Theo Anthony’s docu-essay Rat Film
(trailer here),
which opens tomorrow in New York.
Everybody
acknowledges monkey-fishing was a hoax, but in Baltimore, rat-fishing is a real
thing. We will watch one intrepid rat-fisher and his bat-man as they try to
reel in a nice long Norwegian. You have to give them credit for taking their
sport where they can find it. Other sequences lack their focus. Anthony hopscotches
around, trying to use rats as a metaphor the rise of the urban underclass.
Essentially, it takes him nearly the entire eighty-two minutes to build to the
revelation that rat populations tend to be highest in neighborhoods where the
majority of residents live below the poverty line.
Rat Film is a classic
example of a doc that thinks it is way smarter than it really is. It wants to
blame rats on white one-percent privilege, but if you nose around the trash
cans of the Upper Eastside, it won’t take you long to find something with a
tail. Frankly, Anthony has already been scooped and trumped by Morgan Spurlock
of all people, whose entertaining and ultimately terrifying Discovery Channel
doc Rats also consisted of a string
of loosely connected, observational sequences, but it argues rats are mutating
at such an alarming rate, they just might take over the world if we’re not
careful.
