Lynne Ramsay studies how pain takes shape.
The Scottish director harnesses a poetic, sensory style in which her intimate stories of grief are barbed and transcendent. She is drawn to haunted characters, whether that be openly or implicitly. These stories are often fixated on the question: what happens next?
She probes the mind of a mother whose son committed a school massacre in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) and examines the complex emotionality of a jaded hitman in You Were Never Really Here (2017). Ramsay doesn't deliver a necessarily palatable story, but still, it has you chomping at the bit.
On November 7, Ramsay's fifth feature film will grace theaters across the United States. Die My Love features Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson as a pair of love-drunk, mentally unstable ex-New Yorkers, Grace and Jackson, who have impulsively moved together to rural Montana. At first, the couple is crazed with lustful vitality, but gradually, after Grace gives birth to their son, the couple's boiling intimacy begins to simmer. A writer with writer's block, alone in the house while her husband does whatever, Grace spirals into a psychosis. The story is a feverish portrayal of intense isolation.
Ramsay, now 55, was born to a working-class family in Glasgow. In an interview with BAFTA, she recalled that her first encounter with film was The Wizard of Oz (1939), and the second was Don't Look Now (1973). "They take you into different worlds," she said in that interview. "I was one of those kids who, when watching a film, if anyone asked me a question, I just couldn't answer." She described these pictures as "seared" into her mind. It's no wonder her grief-stricken films burn themselves into our memories.
At first, Ramsay pursued fine art photography, attending Napier College in Edinburgh. However, she had a change of heart and eventually moved to the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, where she graduated in 1995. Her first short film, Small Deaths (1996) won the Short Film Prix du Jury at Cannes. Just three years later, her inaugural film, Ratcatcher, debuted at Cannes, telling a story about a 12-year-old boy who accidentally killed another boy. This grim debut laid the groundwork for what was to come: an oeuvre that breaks down the underbelly of human emotion, from death to despair.
Ramsay's filmography is shockingly sparse for a director whose body of work is revered as one of the most viciously potent. From one psychodrama to the next, each of her five films has carved a space in history. Ramsay told Los Angeles Times that she intends to make a vampire movie next. I know I speak for more than just myself when I say we will all be waiting patiently for that. And she promised it wouldn't be another 10-ish years before we see it.
For this edition of Playback, I'm rolling back the tape on Ramsay's disquieting filmography, where she excavates the worst parts of ourselves.
Ratcatcher (1999)
Ratcatcher (1999), Ramsay's unwavering debut, follows a boy haunted by a friend's drowning through Glasgow's garbage-strewn streets, where guilt and escape blur into the same dream.
James Gillspie (William Eadie), a 12-year-old boy, lives with his family in Glasgow. It's 1975, and the city is caught in the turmoil of the garbage strikes, where piles of rotting trash line the streets. James shoves another boy named Ryan into the canal while playing rough, and the boy drowns. James wanders between his home and the trash-ridden streets, burdened by guilt. Though James manages to find some refuge through a friendship with an older girl, Margaret (Leanne Mullen), and dreams of a new home, Ramsay pulls us into a grim, punishing story.
Ramsay's inaugural film places us in the middle of urban decay, rendered with remarkable effect by cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler. This bleak story eschews hope at every turn, but see the perseverance of a young boy as he grapples with the realities of life -- and his own culpability.
Morvern Callar (2002)
After finding her boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor, Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) conceals his death and steals his manuscript. Ramsay's second film, named after its protagonist, lulls its audience into a trance-like story, where Morvern disappears into a blur of neon clubs and desert heat.
It's Christmastime when Morvern discovers her boyfriend has killed himself. Instead of reporting the death, she erases his name from his manuscript and submits it as her own. The money she receives fuels a hedonistic flight from grief. This cynical epic takes her from seedy hotel rooms to Ibiza nightclubs. Morvern is accompanied by her best friend, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), as they fling themselves through the world at high speeds.
Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times once called the film "pure punk existentialism." There is perhaps no better or more succinct way to describe Ramsay's filmmaking style, where a strong, assured vision makes up for its tottering plot.
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) turns the suburban home into a crime scene, as a mother sifts through the wreckage her son left behind.
That mother is Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), who lives in exile after her teenage son, Kevin (Ezra Miller), commits a mass murder at his high school. Once a travel writer with a glamorous past, Eva now endures the hatred of her neighbors. She is haunted by the moments that might have foretold her family's disaster, ranging from his resistance to toilet training to placing his sister's guinea pig in the garbage disposal. As Eva's reckoning with her son's behavior unravels, Ramsay maps the terrain between anger and melancholy, a space Swinton inhabits with unnerving precision.
Ramsay fractures chronology into shards, cutting between past and present until they bleed into one another. The result is a portrait of motherhood, haunted by a guilt in which love and loathing are indistinguishable.
You Were Never Really Here (2017)
Haunted by war and childhood abuse, the hitman in You Were Never Really Here (2017) moves through trauma and violence with a lyrical intensity.
Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a veteran-turned-hitman living in an unmarked apartment in New York. There, he cares for his elderly mother. To make his money, this mercenary takes brutal jobs rescuing trafficked girls, including Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the daughter of a New York State Senator, played by Alex Manette. All the while, Joe is haunted by PTSD from war and a violent childhood where his father beat him and his mother.
This film, adapted from Jonathan Ames's novella, is steeped in the brutal nature of both Joe's job and his memory. Ramsay's skill as a filmmaker is her ability to explore how violence affects our humanity. Powered by Phoenix's taut, haunted energy, Ramsay's crime thriller aches with exhaustion, rather than rage.
Die My Love (2025)
Die My Love (2025) follows a new mother coming undone, her body and mind turning against her with the raw, merciless intimacy that defines Ramsay's work.
Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattison) have a relationship that can only be described as untamed, one that violently magnetizes the two together. This lust-drunk romance gives them the hubris to believe they can start over in rural Montana, just the two of them. Jackson's mother and father are nearby, but for the most part, their new lives, particularly Grace's, is contained to a farmhouse, where Jackson's uncle once killed himself. Die My Love introduces us to the couple in this house, quiet and rundown, yet still filled with some hope. Grace can write; Jackson can make music. Yet, neither can summon the will, both stagnating in the quiet rot of their new life.
Die My Love jumps ahead to after Grace gives birth to the couple's son. The near-constant sex has died down, as Jackson appears mostly occupied; Ramsay intentionally delivers us very little. This severed connection intensifies Grace's isolation, alone with their baby and struggling to write. From here, Lawrence delivers a ferocious performance as Grace slowly loses grip of her psyche. We see how emotional deprivation -- her sex life, her passions -- drives her closer and closer to the brink. It's a portrait of how depression is layered, how people flail to feel something when they are consumed by it. Grace makes this feeling visceral, hurling herself through a glass door.
Ramsay manages to steer this expressionistic story with a steady, unflinching hand for the first half. That said, Die My Love goes, well, a bit off the rails. In some ways, this is to its benefit, showing the tattered mental state of Grace. In other moments, the story drifts too far afield -- most notably in Grace's affair with her motorbike-riding neighbor (Lakeith Stanfield) -- without ever reining itself back in. But, ultimately, Ramsay's fifth installment fulfills the promise of her work: to drag us through raw emotion until it scalds.