Morvern Callar

Dir: Lynne Ramsay

2002

*****

Based on Alan Warner's 1995 novel, Morvern Callar was Lynne Ramsay’s first adaptation of many. At first it felt like a shame, given how brilliant her short films and debut feature were, but the way she reworks others’ original stories is masterful and the films become very much her own. The novel’s first person narrative is dropped right away, leaving the audience to decipher Samantha Morton’s largely silent performance for themselves. Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) is a young woman living in a small port town in Scotland. She wakes one Christmas morning to discover that her boyfriend has killed himself, leaving a suicide note, mix tape and the manuscript of his unpublished novel behind. There are no screams and no tears, Morvern just sits in stunned silence in the flicker of the Christmas tree lights. The boyfriend’s novel is dedicated to her but she decides to erase his name and puts her own name on the cover instead and sends it to the publisher recommended by her boyfriend in a note. Instead of arranging a funeral with the money on his account, as requested by him, she cuts his body up and buries it in the mountains. With the money she then escapes her work stacking shelves in the local supermarket and goes to Almería on the Costa del Sol, with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott). As they go out and party she feels she's in a different mood to Lanna and leaves her, so she can meet the publishers who have come to meet her in Spain. She plays the role of a writer and receives an advance on the novel for £100,000. Back in Scotland she tries to convince Lanna to come with her to the big world, but Lana refuses as in Spain she met a guy from Leeds who plans to visit her in Scotland. Morvern collects her suitcase and goes to the railway station, her future a mystery but it won’t take place in Scotland. While Ramsay’s previous characters have been largely silent and contemplative, never have they been as cold or distant as Morvern Callar. The character is distant in the novel – which may be what attracted Ramsay to the story – but without narration and very little dialogue the audience is really left alone. Credit to Ramsay for running with it but also credit to the brilliant Samantha Morton who is probably the greatest silent actor working in the age of talking pictures. Callar is alien, totally disconnected to the world around her. It’s almost impossible to relate to her or understand what she is going through but somehow, even when she is cutting up her boyfriend into tiny pieces, we feel sympathy for her. Her intelligence is only really visible in her cunning, after that she seems almost trapped by her own bubble of temporary ignorance. It is only when she finds a way out does she wake up, as it were. It’s not a pleasant story and there is very little for the audience to like about Caller but somehow the ending is a happy one and we’re glad she has sort of succeeded. Her friend Lanna is happy, living for the moment but ultimately standing still, so Caller’s want to move on and the fact she eventually achieves it, is a real positive. We are often told that two wrongs don’t make a right - or is it two rights don’t make a wrong? – either way, that clearly isn’t the case here. The film is far more complex than that but the mesmerizing haze of the beautiful direction, stunning lead performance and intense story. Visually it is a much brighter film for Ramsay but mood and story-wise it is considerably darker – although a little less stark than her previous film. It really showed she was no one trick pony and it got a lot of attention. I feel that she should have made several films since its release in 2002 but thanks to Hollywood’s greed and her integrity her next feature would arrive for another nine years. One of the worst  crimes in cinema during the 00s was that one of the worlds best directors was unable to direct.