🔗 Share this article

Personally struggle with silence. When it’s quiet, my brain fills the gap with racing thoughts. It wasn’t until lockdown, when I was 27, that I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, but looking back it made sense: sleepless adolescent hours, binge-watching shows into the early hours, the ongoing desire for ambient sound.

In my younger years, my insomnia was brutal. On nights I lay awake, my impulse was to move and engage, but I shared a room with my sister so I just had to lie there, immobile and irritated. Our fix emerged: TV. Evenings involved cinematic viewings to ease the tension and mask the stillness.

Our childhood home was quite unstable and frequently, we had solitude, so TV became our bedtime white noise. As a teenager, it turned into a habit: Choosing a feature became my ritual, then see it consecutively after dark for several nights until another film replaced it. Features including those classic titles were top choices. But they weren’t guaranteed fixes, and my sleeping issues persisted.

I’ve watched it every night for 15 years. I often don’t make it past the opening credits without falling asleep.

Then, around age 15 or 16, my mum – a childminder at the time – started the film Ratatouille for the young ones she supervised in our home. It was just after the film had come out. She intended it as a distraction for them, but I viewed it as well and adored it.

That very day, I resolved that it would become my bedtime movie, and I instantly knew I’d struck gold. It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t tried to fall asleep with a film playing, but its sonic landscape is notably uniform. It isn’t related to loudness – naturally, you adjust the audio to preference – but the uniformity. There are no big explosions, no sudden jump scares; only the constant buzz of culinary spaces, sporadic utensil noises.

From that night on, I no longer rotated features – Ratatouille became my nightly ritual. These days, I view it consistently each evening, and for 15 years, this has been the case. I have essentially trained myself to fall asleep to it. A physical copy sits on my shelf, keep it on mobile devices, and stream it when I travel. Under no circumstances am I without it.

My boyfriend has been a saint about it. Co-habitating for nearly a decade, which implies he’s witnessed the intro countless instances – many more repetitions than my own, since many nights, I doze off during the initial sequence. He usually waits until I’m out cold, switches it off, and chooses different content.

Occasionally, folks question whether I enjoy the movie, since the final scenes elude me. My response is affirmative, I adore it. So much so that I sometimes resent how fast it knocks me out, because completing it would be nice. There are probably still whole chunks of it I haven’t seen, even after years of evening use. But My fondness likely plays a role in its success: It provides reliability and solace.

Among friends, it’s an ongoing humorous topic. During overnight visits, they inquire about my cinematic bedtime preparations. My mental health professional knows about it, who agrees that as far as coping mechanisms go, more harmful tactics could address such conditions.

No alternative nighttime viewing comes to mind. The only thing that might possibly replace Ratatouille is the sequel, which is in the works. Until then, I’ll keep watching the original. Or at least the first five minutes.