"Rat Life and Diet in North America" is one of experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland's most acclaimed works in her admittedly little-known career. Perhaps her most ambitious short film, Wieland uses a simple premise to create a protest against the Vietnam War, making what was described by fellow filmmaker Jonas Mekas as "one of the richest political movies around". Her story is simple and told more in the manner of a silent film than by the action speaking for itself, but this is largely in due to the limited things she could do with her main 'actors'. As a whole, the idea isn't the most obvious metaphor to use for a political activism film, but certainly unique as an idea in its own right and carried off with a certain humor.
The plot involves some rats (really pet gerbils) imprisoned in North America, their jailers being a pair of cats. Through title cards - which serve to tell the story since, as stated above, the acting job from the gerbils is extremely limiting - the narrative unfolds as the 'rats' escape this political prison and immigrate up to Canada (Wieland's native country). In terms of creating a metaphor, the film is very odd in its use of animal representation and plot structure: it is hard for me at least to see a strong tie with the Vietnam War within. If Wieland had crafted a more direct story involving real human characters, it would have been easier to fully understand what she was getting at, since this idea feels rather far out. As it is, one can at least vaguely see the film utilizing the concepts of imprisonment and rebellion.
That aside, without looking at the symbolic side it's a pretty unusual and hilarious idea to be sure. The reason I called it ambitious above is obvious: working with animals to tell a story is not unheard of, but for an independent filmmaker not a very easy thing to accomplish. The whole premise is already very strange and the way it is told is even more interesting. What I found particularly funny was the use of sound in the movie: a lot of the music was completely out of place or jarring, particularly the fairground music at the end. Much of it was too funny to take seriously and I personally felt the story worked better on its own than when connected with any real political symbolism. A very odd film definitely but it does work somewhat despite the strange narrative.
