Morvern Callar
by Lynne Ramsay
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Actor: Kathleen McDermott, Linda McGuire, Paul Popplewell, Ruby Milton, Samantha MortonDirector: Lynne Ramsay
Brand: Trinity
Writer: Lynne Ramsay
Producer: Andras Hamori
Producer: Barbara McKissack
Producer: Charles Pattinson
Producer: David M. Thompson
Writer: Alan Warner
Writer: Liana Dognini
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Palm Pictures / Umvd
Product features:
- Academy Award nominee, Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) is the mysterious Morvern Callar. Waking up Christmas morning, Morvern is greeted with a startling surprise; her boyfriend has inexplicably committed suicide. He has left her a cryptic short message on his computer screen - "I love you. Be brave." He has also left her the manuscript for a new novel. Impulsively, Morvern ch
DVD Reviews of Morvern Callar
DVD Review: Blank pages.
Summary: 2 Stars
"Morvern Callar" was a film destined to cause some trouble, for a number of reasons. Of them:
#1- A movie adaptation that plays loose and fast and false with the book is often going to cause trouble.
#2- Whereas many high-minded films and their critics have decided subtlety is a wonderful thing, this movie has decided "If some subtlety is good, more subtlety must be doubly as good!"
#3- People who watch the movie are caught between their frustration with the film'd deliberate inaccessibility and their fear of appearing ignorant when rendering judgement. Thus, you have opinions that hang around on the poles of the extremes, with very little in the middle.
#4- This is not really a dog on the movie itself, but you do have to wonder about the kind of people who write reviews and get on message boards that sneer "If you don't like this movie, go watch The Fast and The Furious." As if anyone who does not like this movie is a wifebeater-wearing, greasy cinema Philistine.
#5- The idea that this movie is superior because it does not, quote "spoon-feed you" all the answers. I would venture that there is a difference between "spoon-feeding" answers and being purposefully evasive and disingenuous to the movie audience.
#6- Samantha Morton is in this movie. That's cause for a lot of trouble, for you see Samantha Morton is a talented actor (I just learned two months ago we're not supposed to use the word actress anymore) who has amassed a cadre of "devoted" (re: rabid) fans who believe that anything she touches turns to gold. Morton has definitively proved her acting chops in movies like "Jesus's Son," "Sweet And Lowdown," and "Code 46" but went really awry in the saccharine "In America" and the sputtering "Minority Report." Morton is a good actor, she's even a good actor for what she's given in this movie.
Unfortunately, that's not enough. This movie gives her too little, or perhaps too much, to work with. There is too much subtlety to this whole movie. Blank pages for the audience to ascribe what they think to them. You can either decide that look means she's torn up inside or not. You're given so little to work with, you can't say either way. Anyone who claims to have the definitive keys to this movie I would be suspicious of as a fraud out to elevate their standing.
This movie doesn't give you a key, or a lock, and nowadays that's supposed to be something to be proud of. It's not. You can make a movie in this fashion, but it needs... for lack of a better word, "meat" to it. People go and walk and do things and mess around and party but they don't truly seem to interact with each other or their environment. Emotions that I think were meant to seem complex and multidimensional seem to be totally ignored. A feeling of numbness and even inability for release would be nice, but the audience is not even given that. Halfway through the film we begin to suspect that we're being strung along, and the ending confirms that suspicion.
Stranger still, this movie gives off a very anachronistic feel to it, the film quality and setting looks like it was made in 1988 or some time.
In short, I don't care for this movie. Morton did a good job with what she had to work with, but in the end this film just did not do enough, confront enough, or accomplish enough. The way this movie has been structured, I believe the reviews on here tell more about the reviewer than the movie. This movie is blank pages. Stare at them, try and figure them out. Make of them what you wish. Just don't attempt to pass any of it off as gospel truth.
Description of Morvern Callar
MORVERN CALLAR - DVD MovieEerie, morbid, yet somehow life-affirming, Morvern Callar stars the superb Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) as the title character, a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend has just killed himself, leaving behind a cassette of assorted songs and an unpublished novel. Instead of reporting his death, Morvern puts her name on his novel before sending it off to a publisher, then uses the dead man's bank card to pay for a trip to Spain with her friend Lana (Kathleen McDermott), where she tries to lose herself in sensation and chaos. The events of Morvern Callar suggest a story, but director Lynn Ramsay (Ratcatcher) focuses on moments of ambiguity and ambivalence in between the dramatic action--and when Morvern does take decisive action, her choices are unnerving. The movie's striking images and rich use of color vividly capture a dislocated state of mind, when life has come unmoored from meaning. --Bret Fetzer
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