Morvern Callar
Studio: Fun City Editions
Feb 01, 2022 Web Exclusive
Christmas Day, Scotland. Morvern Callar returns to her apartment to find her boyfriend sprawled, face-down, in the doorway between their kitchen and living space. Spatters of blood trace a short line between their table to his shredded wrists. The lights around the Christmas tree blink on and off, casting the room in an ominous red hue for two-second intervals. From where she lay on the floor, she can look up at the white glow of his bulky CRT monitor. A document is open on it, and in an oversized font a two-word message has been typed out: “READ ME.”
The opening of 2002’s Morvern Callar is sickening—and beautiful. Director Lynne Ramsay frequently quoted its star, Samantha Morton, during her press rounds for 2017’s You Were Never Really Here; Morton had drawn comparisons between that film and the work of painter Francis Bacon, which Ramsay seems to have appreciated. The comparison is even more apt here. Every moment in Morvern Callar is filmed, edited, and soundtracked in a way that’s stunningly stylized—so much so that one’s easily able to forget about the haunting event which set off its story for large passages of the film. What makes it most like Bacon’s paintings is that Morvern Callar’s images are completely devoid of commentary; the author gives the viewer zero guidance as to what they’re supposed to think about its characters, or how what they see should make them feel.
The opening of Morvern is shocking and bizarre, but not nearly as much as what comes after it.
After stumbling over her boyfriend’s suicide, she takes some time to compose herself, and then goes out to meet up with friends. People occasionally ask her where her lover’s gotten off to, and when pressed, she lies that he’s left her and nobody questions it. His absence seems unimportant. Characters don’t refer to him by name, but only make dismissive remarks about him being a writer; the only time his name is even important is when we watch Morvern delete it from the top of a manuscript for a novel that he left behind for her to submit to publishers posthumously. Instead she places her own name on the front of the file and fires it off to a publishing house anyway.
Like seemingly anything Morvern does in this film, her reasoning and motivation behind this particular action (which happens early in the film’s runtime) is never revealed, or even commented upon. It’s never addressed in her dialogue with other characters, and it’s hard to read anything from her blank slate expression. It essentially becomes a secret known only to our protagonist and the audience. We’re left to draw up our own moral judgments from scratch. This makes Morvern Callar an extremely subjective viewing experience.
Where other films would be about the cover-up, it’s little more than background for Morvern Callar. Morvern goes about her life as (mostly) normal, stocking veggies at a grocery store, visiting a friend’s octogenarian grandmother, partying all night, and finally booking a girls’ getaway to a Spanish resort with her best pal (Kathleen McDermott). There are minor plot developments and a couple should-be bombshell revelations, but these are largely dismissed. Many moments would border on surreal if Morton’s performance wasn’t so quietly naturalistic (albeit stoic.)
Morvern Callar is a movie that’s long begged for an upgrade over its decades-old Palm DVD. Fun City Editions has given it a new 2K scan and restoration, which is brighter and obviously more crisp than that old, murky disc—the movie looks wonderful. Importantly, it sounds excellent, too: the bulk of the soundtrack comes courtesy of a cassette mixtape gifted to Morvern by her late boyfriend, lending the songs extra gravity and intimacy as Morvern (and the audience) listen to them through a pair of earbuds. Extras include an informative commentary track from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson—the same pair who delivered our favorite track of 2021, for a very different movie: Cool As Ice—and a visual essay from Chris O’Neill, which explores the film’s style and draws some extra, well-deserved attention to Morvern Callar’s sound design. Further essays can be found in the Blu-ray’s accompanying booklet.
Both the film itself and this release earn our full-hearted recommendation, and then some. Morvern Callar is an utterly compelling movie, and this lovingly-assembled edition will make repeat viewings that much better.
(vinegarsyndrome.com/products/morvern-callar-fun-city-editions)
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