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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 44846
Released: December 16, 2003 |
| Our Price: $40.00 |
| Used Price: $3.07 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Eerie, 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a young Scottish woman whose boyfriend has just killed himself, leaving behind a cassette of assorted songs and an unpublished novel.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
Morvern Callar Reviews:
Morvern is a hero most Americans won't appreciate--no spoilers review 
2008-12-31 - I don't get the negative reviews for "Morvern Callar." I can understand why many won't like this film--but I can't understand why they watched it. You can tell what kind of film it is right off the bat. Don't their DVD players have OFF switches?
Here's who should watch it:
(1) people who appreciate great acting--Samantha Morton is amazing;
(2) people who realize that the choices available to middle class, college educated Americans are not the choices available to lower working class Scots living in a stratified society where your accent is your destiny. Think "My Fair Lady" except Eliza Doolittle never met Professor 'iggins and had to make her way on her own, only set in the 1990s, only the UK hasn't changed that much in this regard;
(3) people who don't require Hollywood production values, special effects sequences, and artificially flavored happy endings;
(4) people who are prepared to admire Morvern for using everything at her disposal to cope with the rotten hand life dealt her.
I'd be honored to know someone like Morvern, inarticulate working-class bloke that she is. Her educated artistic boyfriend saw something in her that isn't obvious at the beginning--except that she's reasonably attractive. What's inside her is slowly revealed through the course of the movie, which will only seem aimless to those who want to be lead by the hand, like Hollywood is only too happy to do.
My spouse thoroughly disapproved of this movie and Morvern's life choices, and I haven't been able to change her mind. So I understand how appalled some will be at this movie, even some who have been exposed to hundreds of interesting films from all over the world. But though Morvern's no saint and doesn't pretend to be, I approve of her actions in the context in which they occur.
My own father only had a 7th grade education, so perhaps I'm in a better position to understand the working poor. There's so much we take for granted.
For me the high point of the film is a scene in which she's negotiating with two publisher's representatives. She's waaay over her head and bloody well knows it, but she's also plucky and resourceful, and watching her navigate these waters, continually at the brink of disaster, is both wonderful to watch and a wonder of magnificent, mostly wordless acting on Samantha Morton's part. This is a scene I'd show to acting classes.
I'd also use this if I were trying to teach people what "middle class" and "lower class" mean existentially.
Lastly, I know of no other film like this. It doesn't remind me of anything else except perhaps Kurosawa's version of "The lower depths." But that's a stretch.
See "Morvern Callar" if you're honestly prepared to visit the life of someone who absolutely is not from your world.
Credit for acting but not for much else 
2007-08-30 - The cast is quite good in this film, and perhaps some of the music, but the rest of it is unfocused, plodding, and trying to look artsy and mesmerizing by having no sound at all in the early scenes and then showing the main character examining twigs or windows or other things, as if it were meaningful to do so.
It's also impossible to be interested in the protagonist, who disposes of her suicidal boyfriend's body after leaving it in their flat for a while so she can go out and party for the sake of distraction. Then she replaces his name on his novel with hers, gets it accepted and gets the money and credit that should have gone to him.
Later, she drags her best friend out of a hotel in Spain, gets them lost in the wilderness and then abandons her pal.
Sheesh!
confused 
2007-08-02 - I'm not sure why one is supposed to like or sympathise with the protagonist . She performs one dispicable act after another . Abandoning her friend in the desert , stealing money for her boyfriend's funeral , lying about the authorship of a novel , not to mention the disrespect of the corpse . An interesting movie worth seeing but the title character is a horrible person and I got the feeling the filmakers wanted the viewer to like her , why , I don't know .
Trainspotting minus plot, with truncated songs 
2007-04-05 - Let's skip my usual ostentatious introductory paragraph this time and get right to the heart of the matter -- or rather lack thereof, because Good Lord, I just cannot say enough awful things about this movie.
Let's start with the plot. It opens with a dead body in an apartment and that, honestly, is the MOST EXCITING PART OF THE ENTIRE MOVIE. To save you time, here is a complete and total spoiler of this film: vapid semi-attractive mannequin's boyfriend commits suicide, leaving her money for funeral, a novel he wrote, and a mixtape. She publishes his novel as her own, disposes of the corpse, uses money to go to Ibiza with her equally horrible best girlfriend, and sporadically fast-forwards through the lovingly-crafted mixtape the whole while.
That's it! No resolution, no moral, no point whatsoever. It's like MTV Spring Break with Scottish people. In fact the only redeeming part of the film is the soundtrack, which is used so haphazardly and with such severe editing that you may as well be listening to a Negativland album.
Artsy-fartsy types will laud the film for its cinematography. I'm sorry, but if I want long, ponderous shots of random nonsense, I'll watch Baraka, which at least TRIES to have some sort of depth and sincerity; Morvern Callar has neither of these attributes, and in fact seems to regard them with abject scorn and mockery.
I gave up an hour into this movie, because I honestly DON'T CARE HOW IT ENDS. If this is the sort of garbage Warp Records is willing to license their music to, the underground is in bad shape, jack.
Sucked, really. SPOILERS BELOW, but who cares?
2007-03-25 - I would not recommend the purchase of this movie. Why would you let a dead loved one's body lay on the floor for days and just step over it? They never showed Morvern doing any drugs, but I'm sure she had to be on something the way she acted. What normal person chops their lover up and buries them without contacting anyone who might have wanted to know that he was dead.
Was i the only one waiting for Morvern and her "friend" to have sex?
I regret buying this movie.
