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.

If you are feeling too much Christmas cheer left over from the holidays, a perfect antidote is Lynne Ramsay's second feature Morvern Callar. Based on a 1995 novel by Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, superbly performed by Samantha Morton, is a 21-year old supermarket clerk in a Scottish town who wakes in a semi-stupor to discover the sprawling corpse of her boyfriend on the kitchen floor. With Christmas tree lights flashing, she caresses his body but seems unable to act rationally. All she can think to do is open the Christmas presents that include a music tape labeled "Music for You".

She also finds a note in which he apologizes for his act, directs her to publish his recently completed novel, and reveals that he has given her access to his bank account. Morvern does not tell anyone about his death and astonishingly no one asks any questions. Matter of factly, she changes the name on the novel to her own, mails it to a publisher, then cuts up his body in the bathtub, and buries it using only a flat-bladed garden tool.

Using her newfound money, Morvern takes her girlfriend Lanna, played by nonprofessional actress Kathleen McDermott, to the Costa del Clubland in Spain on an extended vacation. They engage in drinking, sex, and drugs to the beat of a hip rock music soundtrack that includes The Velvet Underground, Aphex Twin, and Can. Ramsay creates a technically stylized dreamscape in which physical sensation takes the place of narrative, dialogue is sparse and self-examination is non existent.

When a publisher offers Morvern an advance of 100,00 pounds for a novel she did not write, she believes she has found the ticket to endless pleasure and, after an argument, ditches Lanna somewhere in the Spanish countryside but remains closed and enigmatic to the end. Morvern is impenetrable and unreflective, content to drift along in a mental and physical haze, lacking any sense of right or wrong or feelings for others. Morvern Callar is a beautiful looking film and an enticing sensual experience, but ultimately I found it uninvolving and lacking in emotional depth or integrity.

Morvern comes home one day to find her boyfriend dead on the floor, having committed suicide. In an effort to help her get over his dead, he has left her a note, his money and his first novel - which he wants her to publish. Unsure what to do with herself, Morvern continues living her life, pretending she doesn't know where her boyfriend is; she puts her name on his book and submits it to a publishing house before taking his money and setting off to Spain for a holiday with her friend Lanna.

I taped this film and it became one of those films that I knew I'd never totally be in the mood for - it is always easier to watch some junky action movie on a wet, cold evening rather than something requiring thought. Also the reviews on this site seem to be split between `best film ever' and `worst film ever', something that is never a great sign. Anyway, I decided to watch it as I hoped it would be thought provoking and interesting. I had tried to watch Ratcatcher but had been turned off by it's failed attempts at insight or meaning and I was hoping that this film would either tone that down or actually make it work.

Sadly it didn't really do either. The plot is rambling and is more about Morvern's life and actions after her boyfriend's suicide forces her life to change. In this regard it is quite interesting in theory - Morvern appears to be tired of the life of empty clubbing etc and is looking for `somewhere beautiful' to live. As a look at her character the film interested me and the lack of `action' that some have bemoaned wouldn't have been a problem for me if it had done this well; but it doesn't. It is pretty meaningless and the film really does nothing to help you understand this character or what she is feeling or what she is going through. I am not adverse to films like this, but I do appreciate just a little bit of help in knowing what is going on! As it was, the film overdoes the meaningful shots and symbolism to the point that it left me needed to do just too much work to be able to be on the same page as it.

I realise that, for some, the idea that 20 people can watch it and each come out with 20 different films is a good thing - usually it is for me too, but I do prefer a film to have a firm structure or meaning to it - that will usually allow room for interpretation; but leaving the whole film to interpretation is an issue - especially when someone has gone to the problem of developing this character.why not use that rather than hiding it? Morton is really good and it is clear she knew her character and was well directed. She conveys quite a lot and her performance is one of her strongest I've seen. If only the film had backed her up instead of totally relying on her, mostly silent, performance to explain Morvern to the audience. Support from McDermott is also very confident and natural. The direction is quite good - good use of space and location, some clever shots and most of it does look quite beautiful. The only problem I have with Ramsay is that she seems determined not to help anyone get into her film - she uses way too much heavy meaning, metaphors etc and doesn't support them with anything real.

Overall this was still an interesting film but also a frustratingly empty and hollow one. The heart of the story has been twisted to deliver lots of `deep' insight and symbolism but yet nothing is left on the surface to act as our way in. Morton tries really hard to deliver audience understanding but it is too much for her to do it alone. Worth a look simply because it may connect with you and you will be in the `best film ever' camp, but be warned it could as easily have you bored out of your skull. For me, it interested me and made me think but Ramsay did too good a job at shrouding her story in arty pretensions to allow an idiot like me to be part of it. A shame.

After all the hype that greeted Lynne Ramsay's first film, Ratcatcher, which I didn't see, I approached this with caution. The presence of Samantha Morton was my guarantee that it would at least be watchable, as she's never yet put a foot wrong on screen. And boy was my faith rewarded! It's a long time since I've emerged from a cinema so entranced, and then started itching to see the film again just a few hours later.

Samantha Morton's performance is truly extraordinary, bringing to life this mysterious, inscrutable woman who is at the same time very alive and in-your-face, not out of place getting smashed at a party, yet seeming like an alien as she wanders around listening to her walkman with a dazed 1000 yard stare. I was amazed to read that Kathleen McDermott, who plays her best friend, is a non-professional; it says a lot for her performance that she holds her own opposite such a stellar talent - and also says a lot for the naturalism and generosity of Morton's performance.

Some critics have been much exercised by the implausibilities in the plot (around the fate of her boyfriend's body and the dealings with the publisher, for example). I don't care about all that stuff! This film is as far away from gritty realism as it's possible to get. Go with the flow and soak up the atmosphere is my advice.

You may read that this film is beautifully photographed, that every shot is a small work of art, exquisitely composed and framed. If not, you've just read it from me. That's all very well, of course - they say the same things about Peter Greenaway, who as far as I'm concerned would have been burnt at the stake in a more civilised age. The difference here is the warmth and seeming spontaneity of Lynne Ramsay's work. I didn't hear a voice shouting "look at me, aren't I beautifully filmed??". She doesn't tell us, she just shows us, revealing a gift for finding beauty in the mundane.

The other stroke of genius in this film is the soundtrack - and I don't just mean the music, although that is brilliantly chosen, revealing a trace of gallows humour in the film's grisliest scene; no, just the use of sound, the way we can hear everything, even the cockroach scuttling along the hotel room floor; and the way some of the conversations fade in from a distance, but in such a way that we can still just about hear what is being said.

For once, the hype is justified: Lynne Ramsay is the real deal, and Samantha Morton deserves another Oscar nomination for this breathtaking performance. Unreservedly recommended. So there.

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.