Harry here... Is Samantha Morton's latest performance going undiscovered on the Emerald Isle? Has a great film been passed over for other flicks? We'll see, this is the first review I've gotten for MORVERN CALLAR, but you UK readers, get out there and check this one out. I'm curious to hear more reactions, sounds like it could be a very good movie, though I don't know about this whole masterpiece spiel... We'll see...
Hi Harry, got a review here from England of a truly amazing film that I have seen nothing about on the site, 'Morvern Callar'(based on the Alan Warner novel), starring Samantha Morton and directed by Lynn Ramsey, who helmed the absolutely beautiful 'Ratcatcher' a couple of years back. In all the rush to find the latest 'Bridget Jones' Diary' or 'Four Weddings', this film seems to have been forgotten in the slew of horseshit that is generally synonymous with the phrase 'British Film Industry'. This film has been on a severely limited release even in its native country, which is depressing, BUT I did manage to catch it after taking a trip to nearby Manchester.
Essentially (and without spoilers except for those established in the premise) Samantha Morton plays Morvern Callar, a young woman who awakes one day to find that her boyfriend has killed himself. She finds a suicide note on his computer, along with the full manuscript of his unpublished novel. The rest of the film concerns itself with the chain of events set in motion by what Morvern decides to do. During the course of the film we travel from the downcast Scottish town where Morvern lives to the blistering sun of Ibiza, as events take increasingly surreal and dreamlike turns, and Morvern moves, almost ghostlike, throughout the whole preceedings, towards an ending that is as satisfying as it is deeply enigmatic and unsettling.
The film is astonishing. After a remarkable feature debut with 'Ratcatcher', Lynn Ramsay has ironed out even the relatively small narrative problems from which that film occasionally suffered. She repeatedly confronts the viewer with mesmeric, repetitive imagery, sound loops, and changing film stocks to create a hypnotic atmosphere, before changing apparently effortlessly to beautiful panoramas and static images. Her use of a personal stereo and a compiled tape as a narrative tool is stunning, alternating between tinny distance and full bodied noise, displaying to the audience how easily they can be shut out of Morvern's mind.
Morton, best known to US audiences from Minority Report, delivers a performance so far removed from any traditional notion of 'acting' that the boundaries between actor and character blur almost completely. Although she speaks virtually no lines (something it seems she is used to after Sweet And Lowdown and Minority Report) she inhabits the character so fully that we are in no doubt that she is Morvern, a performance that befits a film so heavily reliant on its central character.
Seeing how the film was released in the UK, I cannot imagine it will have a US release that befits its brilliance. All I can say is, seek it out, clamour for it to be released stateside, Ramsay is a genuinely exciting and visionary director, and Morton delivers a performance that should mark her out as the finest actress of her generation (and I don't use these terms lightly). There must be more people from the UK who have seen and loved this film - write in and let people know. Dont get buried under a slew of horseshit. This is a British film worth getting excited about.
Call me Captain B
