Morvern Callar

For me, the most notable thing about this film was the scarcity of dialogue. It is a brave move on the director's part for sure, but for a film that tells a story of personal awakening (of sorts), the infrequent speech means we can never be sure of what Morvern is thinking or feeling. We don't get much help from the camera either - the film is exquisitely shot, but many of the scenes have a confrontational, tense and opaque sense of aesthetics - there is not enough variation in feel to tell the story of someone who changes their life completely.

My reading of Morvern Callar (as a film and a character) is of a woman who escapes from a humdrum, ugly life. Through personal awakening, art and good fortune, she comes to embrace a more bohemian and expansive existence. In short, she learns to live.

It's a big story and a big theme - yet we never really understand how and why Morvern comes to change her entire outlook on life. Neither do we hear enough from her to mitigate the more unpleasant sides of her character - her frequent (and occasionally sociopathic) lack of emotional response, her selfish excess, her deliberate mistreating of her friend. I suspect she is supposed to be a hero of sorts, but she could equally be an anti-hero or even something in between. We just never find out enough about her - in her words, anyone else's words or the director's shooting of her.

I'm glad that the film has made me consider questions like this, and as an intellectual exercise it's therefore quite enjoyable. As entertainment, as statement or as spectacle however, it's quite badly flawed.

I looked at my watch quite frequently during Morvern Callar. I first felt impatient during the opening sequence which seemed unnecessarily drawn out. I'm sure living with a corpse in a small apartment for apparently several days can't have been very pleasant as decay starts to set in.

There are other parts of the film that just don't ring true, either. How did she use her boyfriend's debit card to get access to his entire balance? Also, I can't believe that the publishers would find her a credible author. I would have been very suspicious of her attitude and empty-headedness.

There were some beautiful images and some likeable scenes in this film, but it was like sitting through someone else's dream. The more I think about this film the less I really like it. Downgraded from my initial score of seven to a six.

I have to say that Samantha Morton is a superb actress. She doesn't play a part so much as become the part. I only hope that she's grounded enough in real life to survive this kind of immersion in her roles.

Samantha Morton stars as a "morally ambiguous" young Scottish woman who seems to come into and go from her life and surroundings without the least bit of effect from others or towards herself. I would almost label this film an Existential effort, but the main character, "Morvern Callar", DOES occasionally seem to connect with someone or something… seem… Samantha Morton does a wonderful job creating a character that deserves no attention, yet keeps you watching. Think of this story as one expressing Distances – Detachments – Disabled Psyches. Her reactions seem consistently inappropriate – ill timed for the moment. Her socialization gene was stunted at birth. Life, for better and worse, is little more than water off her back. She's not being mean, she's not being ironic, she's not being moody. She's just not being. (PS: If you have trouble with Scottish accents, prepare to concentrate.)

I purveyed the comments on IMDB before deciding *first* to read the book and then watch the movie. I think this was the right move, and would strongly advise those so inclined to do the same.

So, Samantha Morton may be the greatest silent film actress of the 21st century. Her muteness in "Sweet and Lowdown" and "Minority Report" and now here speaks volumes. Seriously though she took on an extremely difficult character to portray, one whose impenetrability is at her very essence, Ms. Morton made this character seem real.

Real, albeit alien. But then a degree of alienation I think comes with what I perceive as an existential novel and film. Initially in the book, I felt that Alan Warner, the author, was too removed from his main character...across chasms of gender and age.

But as I read the book, and now watch the film...it seems to me that Morvern is a person removed from herself. Many of us fill up our days, our thoughts and such online sites as this with words.

Words....words...words.

Morvern is almost sub-literate, her interaction with publishers in both book and film is thus comical, in a sort of Chauncey Garner mode of just being there. Morvern's character always lived through her senses more than her mind. As did her best "friend" who ultimately remains the happy hedonist.

But Morvern...like the many insects shown onscreen...moves on, not with any necessary destination...she just moves for the sake of moving. I think that this ultimately is the light this film brings. I can see how others cite grief as the focus; both the suicide that impels our story, and the hotel interlude near its crossing raise the spectre of death around Morvern.

However, I see her as more absent than abjectly anguished in both of those pivotal scenes... This is the conundrum of Morvern Callar for me, while I'm attracted to such an existence, the fact that I consider it...means I'm already living more through mind than senses. If she's remote to herself, than that puts me at an even greater distance. I think this was underscored by the soundtrack switching from sound to softened sound to silence throughout.

One word about the soundtrack, where's the Peter Brotzmann? Now that's a sensory overload that shuts off my mind in favor of the senses. I was hoping more of the bands featured in the book would have made it to the film. I thought that the artists listed in the book, typically the heroes of college DJ's and other overthinkers made a remarkable contrast with Morvern's seeming simplicity.

But there's more to her than meets the eye...and...the ear, the tongue, the nose, the skin...just as there's more to this film than others' comments would indicate.

7*/10

* Again I encourage folks read the book and then enjoy the film as a chaser of sorts to flesh it out.

I haven't read the book of 'Morvern Callar', but I have read a couple of other works by Alan Warner, both of which where distinguished by their spiky characters and irreverent tone. This film, however, is made by Lynne Ramsay, whose first work was 'Ratcatcher', a move both astonishingly affecting and almost unwatchable. In 'Morvern Callar', she opts for a similarly intense style. Ramsay is a master of certain cinematic tricks, which she uses with more skill than discretion: frequent cutting (both within and between scenes) and the use of fragmentary, non-explanatory dialogue. She succeeds in conveying a sense of alienation and a semi-documentary feel, but there's no relief, no variation in mood at any point in the film. Samantha Morton (too old for the role and, crucially, not Scottish) plays Morvern as a kind of semi-moron; and yet their are times when the film seems also to be presenting her as a deep and knowing soul, a not altogether happy conjunction. Also worthy of criticism is the peculiar soundtrack: the songs we hear just don't sound like what we would expect a girl like Morvern to listen to, feeling instead like a heavy handed attempt by the director to set the scene from the outside.

Perhaps I am being too hard on the film because it wasn't what I expected from my knowledge of the writer. Once I got over this, I did quite enjoy it, many individual scenes are very nicely crafted, and the loose, drifting plot has its own appeal. But it feels more as if it was based on a short story than a novel, and Ramsay's determination to show Morvern as a victim (it's never clear of what) strips it of its potentially comic dimensions and leaves us with a thin outline trying too hard to assert its own significance. An interesting film, but one that appears to have lost sight of its purpose.