Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writers: Lynne Ramsay, Liana Dognini, Alan Warner
Photography: Alwin H. Kuchler
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.
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.
Morvern leaves the body where it is. She dresses up like Robert Blake in Lost Highway, takes some money from the corpse’s pocket (not all of it), and leaves. She meets Lanna and friends for some kind of holiday get-together. They ask about her husband. She says he has left her. They say he’ll be back. They end up at a house party where girls are stripping and there’s a giant bonfire in the backyard. There are scenes later where Morvern opens her Christmas presents. One is a tape the deceased made for her, which she listens to a lot, providing some of the best moments in the picture. Lee Hazlewood’s “Some Velvet Morning” is a high point. She changes the byline on the manuscript from his name to hers, packages it up and sends it off. They have different last names, and we learn she is deeply ignorant of literature and publishing, more clues to the nature of this relationship which has ended with his suicide. It seems tenuous to say the least.
Morvern and Lanna work day jobs in a grocery store. Morvern doesn’t like to go home but when she does she steps around the corpse. Finally she covers it up with a blanket and eventually moves it to the bathtub so she can clean the floor of the blood. Her instinct for some reason is to hide the death, dispose of the body. She never seems to question this. She and Lanna hang out together a lot. Morvern suddenly has a lot of money (presumably from her husband’s resources). She treats Lanna to things when they are out and about, including eventually a two-week trip to a resort in Spain. When Lanna asks where the money comes from Morvern only says, “the bank.” They end up in Pamplona for the running of the bulls—big festivals in foreign places an element that Ramsay also uses in Kevin.
All of this has been strange enough—a portrait of one of those high-spirited intense times in life at inflection points, times of less sleep, travel, dancing, drugs, wasting money, disconnected from reality, but knowing it must end, that these times cannot be sustained this way. And then comes a twist which puts the situation into a new and comically even worse perspective. There is keen interest in the manuscript from the first publisher Morvern approached—so much so that representatives travel to Spain to dangle offers of a 100,000-pound advance. She has nothing to say, obviously, it’s a bit awkward, when they ask her about the novel and what her plans are for future writing projects. She is only fixated on an amount of money that seems impossible.
It is impossible. We know this can’t possibly come to a good end, even if the movie leaves us in an ambiguous place. Morvern careens ahead with her unrealistic plans and her seeming good luck (which must end). She and Lanna are fun-loving and immature, young even for their mid-20s ages. It is a riveting downward spiral and often feels dangerous. Morvern and Lanna have an interesting, complicated relationship that is also very simple. They are workmates in a grocery store who are young and live for fun (one more clue about the relationship between Morvern and her husband). Morvern’s secret, and one of Lanna’s too, is what makes everything complicated. Morvern Callar is sad, bracing, and harrowing by turns, with great performances from the principals, a good supporting cast, a great script, good soundtrack. One to see.
Morvern and Lanna work day jobs in a grocery store. Morvern doesn’t like to go home but when she does she steps around the corpse. Finally she covers it up with a blanket and eventually moves it to the bathtub so she can clean the floor of the blood. Her instinct for some reason is to hide the death, dispose of the body. She never seems to question this. She and Lanna hang out together a lot. Morvern suddenly has a lot of money (presumably from her husband’s resources). She treats Lanna to things when they are out and about, including eventually a two-week trip to a resort in Spain. When Lanna asks where the money comes from Morvern only says, “the bank.” They end up in Pamplona for the running of the bulls—big festivals in foreign places an element that Ramsay also uses in Kevin.
All of this has been strange enough—a portrait of one of those high-spirited intense times in life at inflection points, times of less sleep, travel, dancing, drugs, wasting money, disconnected from reality, but knowing it must end, that these times cannot be sustained this way. And then comes a twist which puts the situation into a new and comically even worse perspective. There is keen interest in the manuscript from the first publisher Morvern approached—so much so that representatives travel to Spain to dangle offers of a 100,000-pound advance. She has nothing to say, obviously, it’s a bit awkward, when they ask her about the novel and what her plans are for future writing projects. She is only fixated on an amount of money that seems impossible.
It is impossible. We know this can’t possibly come to a good end, even if the movie leaves us in an ambiguous place. Morvern careens ahead with her unrealistic plans and her seeming good luck (which must end). She and Lanna are fun-loving and immature, young even for their mid-20s ages. It is a riveting downward spiral and often feels dangerous. Morvern and Lanna have an interesting, complicated relationship that is also very simple. They are workmates in a grocery store who are young and live for fun (one more clue about the relationship between Morvern and her husband). Morvern’s secret, and one of Lanna’s too, is what makes everything complicated. Morvern Callar is sad, bracing, and harrowing by turns, with great performances from the principals, a good supporting cast, a great script, good soundtrack. One to see.
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