Morvern Callar (2002)

UK / Canada, 97 minutes

Director: Lynne Ramsay

Writers: Lynne Ramsay, Liana Dognini, Alan Warner
Photography: Alwin H. Kuchler

Music: Can, Aphex Twin, Ween, Stereolab, Lee Hazlewood

Editor: Lucia Zucchetti

Cast: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Raife Patrick Burchell, Dan Cadan, James Wilson, El Carrette, Linda McGuire

In the strange alienated Scottish setting of this picture Morvern Callar is the name of a person, a young woman. Morvern Callar is a character study. As it starts, Morvern (Samantha Morton) has come home on Christmas Eve or maybe the night of Christmas Day to find her husband dead of suicide, with a note he left her on the computer. We have reason to believe it’s her husband because they live together and she wears a ring. He was an aspiring writer and left her a manuscript and instructions for approaching publishers. Another character at one point refers to him affectionately as “our Dostoevsky.” We see that Morvern is wearing a ring, but as the movie goes along, and she spends most of her time with her best friend, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott, who is excellent), it seems more like it must have been a casual boyfriend / girlfriend relationship, and not of long duration. But it’s never certain.

In many ways Morvern Callar is a movie about grief and how differently people can experience it. Morvern seems to be a case of extreme denial and we keep waiting for it to break and bring her back to a reality we understand, but that’s not the way this movie goes. Much of it for us is about just watching—in amazement, in disbelief, in shock—and at that mesmerizing level it is very good in the expert hands of director and cowriter Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here, We Need to Talk About Kevin), who takes her time making movies or perhaps is delayed getting funding for pictures that are powerful and easy to admire but not a lot of fun to watch. Morvern Callar reminds me of Terence Malick’s Badlands, traveling the strange psychological pathways of underclass youth, who just don’t know any better. It’s kind of sickening but you can’t take your eyes off it.

“New Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1984)

[spoilers] This story is, of course, outlandish and beggars belief—well, that’s Clive Barker for you. What I like is the bold way it takes on the Edgar Allan Poe original, itself outlandish and beggaring belief. Barker is having some fun with Poe and his ridiculous ideas. Namely, the “Ourang-Outang” villain of Poe’s story along with other elements of it. It’s one of a few places where Poe is found inventing the detective story with his Parisian investigator, C. Auguste Dupin, a plain forerunner of Sherlock Holmes, but with even more ridiculous examples of those good old breathtaking and unbelievable feats of logic and deduction. Arthur Conan Doyle would prove more skillful at it. Sometimes you almost don’t notice how silly the amazing deductions can be. As in the original Poe, mysterious and violent murders have occurred in Paris. They turn out to be the work of a cleverly disguised primate. Poe may have been proceeding from the ignorance of the times when he was writing (circa 1841), but Barker has to know better in 1984. We all loved Koko the gorilla, who may or may not have been able to communicate with sign language, but no ape is going to shave and dress up in human garb, walk with mincing steps, and go on killing sprees. Come on. Barker bristles with imaginative weird ideas and tosses them with gore. There’s gore aplenty here, as usual, be warned—in both Rue Morgue stories, for that matter. This Ourang-Outang, or whatever it is—Barker just calls it an ape—uses a razor to kill. What’s the beef? Inhibitions of civilization, or just everyday psychopathy (ape style)? Who knows? We should never forget that Barker came originally from the theater (now he paints, writes, and directs movies too). He is over-the-top theatrical for exactly that reason. He writes VERY BIG as well as long. He’s literate and knows his chosen field, or is learning it in these Books of Blood stories as he writes. If “Skins of Our Fathers” (also in Vol. 2) reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft, “New Murders” is obviously riffing on Poe. Barker is certainly aware of his salient traditions. He's having fun but also acknowledging his sources. He basically writes the same story here that Poe did, copying the master as it were. Barker tips this in many ways, including by making his main character a descendant of one of the principals in Poe’s original. This one’s just for the fun of it. For best effect, read the two “Rue Morgue” stories together.

Clive Barker, Books of Blood, Vols. 1-6 (Vol. 2 kindle)
Listen to story online.

New Year memo

Happy new year to everyone except Donald Trump and MAGAs although it may be a happy new year for them despite anything I say. Thanks, voters! It’s hard to know what to say. The less said the better maybe, but watching will be more critical than ever. I seriously doubt grocery prices return to 2019 levels as promised, for example. Another devastating pandemic is more likely at this point. But I’m over here, keeping my little blog, cold comfort perhaps, too often feeling like embers of boomer view flaring up in a random breeze. I’m facing retirement this year so we’ll see how that goes. I’m not planning much different for the blog in 2025. I liked doing a couple of albums a month last year so much I’m going to try to keep it up, albeit with no countdown involved. That’s on Saturdays. Sundays are books and (increasingly, it seems) stories. Last Sundays I’m surveying the short fiction published in book form by J.D. Salinger, which is amazingly meager, only nine stories and four novellas (plus one novel, The Catcher in the Rye). I saw a 2013 documentary this year on Salinger, who died in 2010. The doc and people in a position to know (one would think) were then promising a handful or so of books of posthumous material, including a memoir of his unusually harrowing World War II experience, more Glass family stories, and other tantalizing stuff. WHERE ARE THEY? That’s my only question. Mondays are for recent movies, Thursdays for horror stories, and Fridays for classic movies of various repute. Critics like the darnedest things and so does the mass audience. Last, for your list-consuming pleasure, my list of Beatles albums ranked. YMMV—even your sense of what is and is not a Beatles album. Stay safe out there, folks.

Beatles albums ranked
UK editions, except as noted. The Past Masters collections, released in 1988, gather material not released on Beatles albums.

1. Rubber Soul (US, 1965)
2. Help! (1965)
3. A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
4. Abbey Road (1969)
5. Past Masters, Vol. 2 (1965-1970)
6. Magical Mystery Tour (US, 1967)
7. Revolver (1966)
8. Past Masters, Vol. 1 (1962-1965)
9. Beatles for Sale (1964)
10. Please Please Me (1963)
11. With the Beatles (1963)
12. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
13. The Beatles (“White Album,” 1968)
14. Let It Be (1970)
15. Yellow Submarine (1969)