Morvern Callar

source: Morvern Callar

I have to admit that I stuck this one out thinking something would have to happen, besides the dead body in the first scenes... and her disposal of him. I was wrong. It was a cinema verite of Betty hits the Beach encased for the first part by Mordant Morven. I really don't care what young lassies from Scotland do these days, who thy screw, what drugs they take. Visually, the stroll through the Cabo de Gata in Andalucia was pleasant and surely the high point for me. The nadir was the chop shop for her dead boyfriend. As the movie came to a close I had two thoughts... 1. That's all there is? 2. Now I see why her boyfriend killed himself. Rename it. "Bare Bitch Boredom, or What I did on my trip to Spain." I'm such a sucker for sticking these things out.

My wife and I watch a film every night with no distractions, and mostly artsy films that require thought. I have tons of patience for films that are slow to blossom. My wife has double the attention span that I do. All that being said-- this film is just plain empty and BORING! It went nowhere. Never blossomed. It started fairly strong with a promising plot...then she bakes cookies...goes to Spain....she sulks, she stares....the credits roll. Uneven, full of holes, false starts & dead ends. We FF'd through several extended sequences of her just staring off into space. Artificial depth was implied when she played with the mud and cried. Zzzz...... It's like a beautifully shot chick-flick that's pretending to be deep or artsy. You never get to know nor understand Morvern at all. About halfway through you just don't care anymore. We just wanted to see at least one of the plot lines develop. Don't waste your time on this. I'm shocked it scores so high.

For me, the most notable thing about this film was the scarcity of dialogue. It is a brave move on the director's part for sure, but for a film that tells a story of personal awakening (of sorts), the infrequent speech means we can never be sure of what Morvern is thinking or feeling. We don't get much help from the camera either - the film is exquisitely shot, but many of the scenes have a confrontational, tense and opaque sense of aesthetics - there is not enough variation in feel to tell the story of someone who changes their life completely. My reading of Morvern Callar (as a film and a character) is of a woman who escapes from a humdrum, ugly life. Through personal awakening, art and good fortune, she comes to embrace a more bohemian and expansive existence. In short, she learns to live. It's a big story and a big theme - yet we never really understand how and why Morvern comes to change her entire outlook on life. Neither do we hear enough from her to mitigate the more unpleasant sides of her character - her frequent (and occasionally sociopathic) lack of emotional response, her selfish excess, her deliberate mistreating of her friend. I suspect she is supposed to be a hero of sorts, but she could equally be an anti-hero or even something in between. We just never find out enough about her - in her words, anyone else's words or the director's shooting of her. I'm glad that the film has made me consider questions like this, and as an intellectual exercise it's therefore quite enjoyable. As entertainment, as statement or as spectacle however, it's quite badly flawed.

It was probably just my DVD---but I would not recommend that anyone try to watch this picture on a DVD. I had to turn up the volume on my TV to the highest possible level, in order to hear about 80 percent of the dialog. Some of the talking still remained sub-audible. If you're from Scotland, you might have a chance, albeit a slim one. Peoples voices were drowned out by nearly all ambient sounds, including unwrapping a package, footsteps, even puffing on a cigarette. With the volume turned up to a level at which voices can be heard, I can guarantee that at least one of your neighbors will phone the police when the scene changes to a loud environment, such as a disco. And that you will injure yourself diving for the remote to turn it back down. There is art and there is art, even in the field of audio mixing. But this effort, in a time of war, would meet international criteria to be classified as an atrocity. After about a half hour, I gave up, having seen nothing else redeeming in the picture, either.

There is an old saying "gratuitous nudity does not make up for lack of ideas". This is true in this movie. It starts with the lead lady cradling her boyfriend who has just killed herself, and what happens for the rest of the film? A B S O L U T E L E Y N O T H I N G I fail to see what others do in this movie, there is no dialogue, one is supposed to get that this woman is grieving ( according to the director) but i thought that she was indifferent. There was nothing ( and i mean nothing) to commend this film. It was truly a waste of time. Storyline: none Conversation: None Insights: None One could, in theory, find a bigger waste of time, but this would be difficult if not impossible. this movie failed on every level

Samantha Morton stars as a "morally ambiguous" young Scottish woman who seems to come into and go from her life and surroundings without the least bit of effect from others or towards herself. I would almost label this film an Existential effort, but the main character, "Morvern Callar", DOES occasionally seem to connect with someone or something… seem… Samantha Morton does a wonderful job creating a character that deserves no attention, yet keeps you watching. Think of this story as one expressing Distances – Detachments – Disabled Psyches. Her reactions seem consistently inappropriate – ill timed for the moment. Her socialization gene was stunted at birth. Life, for better and worse, is little more than water off her back. She's not being mean, she's not being ironic, she's not being moody. She's just not being. (PS: If you have trouble with Scottish accents, prepare to concentrate.)

(spoiler) I say spoiler, though when a movie has no real plot or ending, it's difficult to spoil much of anything. In fact, the simplest way to prevent my spoiling this film would be for you to not waste an hour and a half of your life watching it. The entire story (a girl finds her boyfriend with his wrists slit, puts her name on the novel he left for her and sends it to a publisher, goes on an ecstasy binge, saws the body into pieces, buries it, takes the funeral money he left and uses it to go to Spain, gets paid a s***load of cash for the book she didn't write, leaves her boring town for a new life) could be told in ten minutes. The cinematography, though beautiful, cannot carry each long scene after another. This film leaves a lot of interpretation up to the viewer (and I'm not just talking about the glaring lack of subtitles on the DVD for the American audience...good God, these accents make Trainspotting sound like perfect English). One could interpret Morvern's actions as a person determined to better her life, or maybe as someone in an incredible, prolonged state of shock. But I found it impossible to overlook her own selfish actions in stealing his novel and his money. Oh, and the fact that SHE SAWED HIM INTO PIECES AND BURIED HIM! What a freaking psycho. I was hoping she'd be arrested when she arrived home from Spain. I was hoping for anything interesting. For her friend to be mad she ditched her in the middle of a foreign country. I was hoping for anything but what happened. She finds the check for the novel (which we knew was coming) and ditches her friend again at a bar. One minor story complaint: If he was leaving money for a funeral, wouldn't that suggest that there are people other than Morvern who will eventually realize he's dead? I really wanted to see her outcome. I guess that wasn't the point of the movie. But then, there was no point to the movie at all. Oh, I also caught the delete key deleting from right to left instead of left to right. Maybe the highlight of the movie, other than the club music (which trust me, there wasn't very much of).

There are a lot of pretentious people out there who will pretend that this is endowed with some kind of beautiful meaning, and that ignorant fools like me don't 'get' it. Obviously this means that we should stick to Hollywood dross. It has every, a-hem, artistic cliché in the book - I guess it is good that the director is one of the chosen few. Almost a self parody drowning in its own pretense. The director of the (almost equally embarrassing) movie 'Ratcatcher' returns with another piece wallowing in artistic nonsense; it is difficult to understand and apparently is a study of alienation. The best way to describe this film is alienating for its viewers.

This film is a waste. It is moronic and implausible. The first five minutes is interesting, and then for the next 85 minutes nothing happens. Then something happens and it is moronic and implausible. However, worse than that, it is in English with no subtitles, and you can't understand a word they say. The female leads are ugly to look at. It is a total waste of time. I gave it a 1 because there isn't a 0.