Opening your movie with a tableau-like scene of the titular character (Samantha Morton) awaking in the embrace of her dead boyfriend, only to have her immediately hit the pub, is undoubtedly phenomenal. That’s exactly how Lynne Ramsay opened Morvern Callar in 2002.
It’s Christmas Day, and Morvern’s dead boyfriend has left her a Word document suicide note:
Don’t try to understand, it just felt like the right thing to do.
-My novel is on the disk, print it out and send it to the first publisher on this list, if they will not take it try the next one down.
I wrote it for you.
I love you.
Be brave.
I left money in the bank for the funeral, the card is in the drawer, you know the code.
Keep the music for yourself.
Morvern does send the novel to a publisher. But also: cuts his body up and buries it, spends the 4K on a package med holiday, nicks maybe 50 quid from his back pocket, and deletes his name from the manuscript to write her own.
She passes the film’s runtime by taking pills, hooking up with a breed of man that died in 2010 and hanging out with her best mate Lanna (Kathleen McDermott). Occasionally we see her at work in a supermarket. It all takes place to the dulcet tones of The Velvet Underground, Broadcast, Aphex Twin and Ween.
The music is diegetic, the Walkman and mixtape is a gift from the dead boyfriend lying by the Christmas tree. The film’s soundtrack is the only real haunting James—according to effaced author credential—really does. It’s odd because honestly, the film’s synopsis had me thinking I’d relate to this faceless, lineless character. But, the film has no interest in the writer. In fact, when examining a later scene, the film is most definitely laughing at him. Somehow, this made me like the film even more.
Morvern is not quite talented enough to be Ripley. Though the film does directly show Jack Nicholson stealing the identity of a dead man in The Passenger. There’s a lot to interpret. We could infer that her boyfriend was a wealthy layabout who deserved it through contextual clues about his egocentric, comfortable lifestyle as a writer and the fact that he owns a Glaswegian flat. If, that is, the moral dilemma were to matter at all.
Her and her best friend and co-worker Lanna’s nights out are a Lynchian frenzy of nights spread from the highland to the nauseatingly fluorescent streets of Spain. What does Morvern think of Spain? The ants are nice.
I really enjoy how older American critics have talked about the Spanish half of this film. It just makes sense, I mean, how would they know anything about an all-inclusive in Benidorm? I’m upset that I haven’t heard the phrase ‘yobs arseholed on chemicals’ as a descriptor for ‘girls’ holiday to Ibiza’. The film exists in a delightfully British bubble, but it’s definitely not inaccessible. That being said, I have seen some say they had to watch it subtitled due to the highland accents.
Morvern is naively guileless when the publishers follow her to Spain. They believe her to be an elusive writer too jaded to consult with them. She blinks at their questions and answers as honestly as she can. As far as she’s concerned, she works in the Supermarket (‘fruit and veg’ as she gleefully tells the astonished literati) and she’s on holiday. The publishers take her unpretentious responses to be postmodern. She’s a genius.
The publishers even comment on how much they love the books ‘honesty’ and ‘strong female voice’. “Well, I do books because it’s got a lot to offer me” is Morvern’s elevator pitch “Knock off when you want, look out the window, smoke a cigarette, make a cup of coffee, take a shower…is that ok?”
The film is a mystery, but in this scene, it made perfect sense to me. There are so many questions the film prompts the viewer to ask, and in return, the film refuses to answer them. Its responses to the call to action are unambitious but beautiful. It’s the film’s charm.
It’s so easy to talk about how much of that magic is in the hands of lead performance Samantha Morton. Yet, for as expressive as Morton is, that expressiveness doesn’t allow the viewer to frame her character’s actions. Is she amoral, in denial or confused? Did she love him and vice versa? Did she read his damn book at all?
The film is a delightfully existentialist Korine-like wonder. It’s a questionable fairytale and, as such, its characters and their actions are more symbolic than believable. Despite the film’s faint undercurrent of bleak realism.
Ramsay herself explains she sees Morvern as more iconic than realised. particularly when dismembering the body in her underwear with a Walkman taped to her torso, it just can’t have happened. A lot of surrealism contained in a person. Often it feels more so that Morvern herself is the purveyor of that magic than the film at large, she’s in a dream of sorts.
Morvern works in a supermarket, and she’s on holiday. What more could we possibly need to know?
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