Morvern Callar and the search for some­thing beautiful

Who is Morvern Callar? She is a work­ing-class super­mar­ket employ­ee who, after com­ing home to find her husband’s dead body and a sui­cide note, strug­gles with sor­row and a yearn­ing to escape the inex­orable tedi­um of her cur­rent lifestyle.

As is cus­tom­ary with Lynne Ramsay’s char­ac­ters, Morvern (Saman­tha Mor­ton) is by no means a par­a­digm of soci­etal nor­mal­cy. She has a com­plex­i­ty that embod­ies the unpre­dictabil­i­ty and irra­tional­i­ty of human behav­iour – espe­cial­ly when inflict­ed with grief. The entire film is drenched with this crush­ing real­ism whilst still man­ag­ing to be visu­al­ly poet­ic. Ram­say is a mas­ter at cre­at­ing such a del­i­cate balance.

The film begins with an unset­tling still­ness which, after the tit­u­lar character’s face is lit up inter­mit­tent­ly by a dis­con­cert­ing red glow, abrupt­ly reveals that she is lying motion­less with her recent­ly deceased spouse. This immer­sive open­ing is a haunt­ing exam­ple of the director’s suc­cinct visu­al style, she hones in on indi­vid­ual details as opposed to craft­ing elab­o­rate con­coc­tions of image and sound. It lends her work a beau­ti­ful raw­ness that brings to mind Robert Bresson’s sim­i­lar­ly refined touch – as avowed by Ram­say in an inter­view with Cri­te­ri­on for the release of Ratcatcher.

The red hue, which in the open­ing is made by Christ­mas lights, is repli­cat­ed through­out the film. For exam­ple, when a drug-fuelled haze of par­ty lights spo­rad­i­cal­ly illu­mi­nates Morvern’s face. The ongo­ing inclu­sion of this light­ing effect in sev­er­al of the film’s major scenes clev­er­ly points to its impor­tance as a visu­al sig­ni­fi­er. It exter­nalis­es her grief and dis­plays it as a brood­ing pres­ence that dras­ti­cal­ly varies in its inten­si­ty. One sec­ond she is rel­a­tive­ly hap­py, the next she is over­come with immense anguish – as is evi­dent when a play­ful bak­ery ses­sion with her best friend Lan­na (Kath­leen McDer­mott) is inter­rupt­ed by her omi­nous­ly shak­ing hands (all while the Christ­mas tree flash­es in the foreground).

This is a per­fect depic­tion of how grief can suck­er punch you, and is a tes­ta­ment to how accu­rate­ly Ramsay’s visu­al com­po­si­tion por­trays the emo­tion through­out the film. The direc­tor cap­tures how inner tur­moil is rarely reflect­ed in a person’s body lan­guage. One shot sees Morvern lying in bed, awake, while the reflec­tion of rain­drops stream down her cheek. This shot com­mu­ni­cates her out­er numb­ness as result of her gen­er­al apathy.

It is obvi­ous that Morvern’s life is stag­nant, and it takes the death of her part­ner for her to ful­ly realise it. We see her burn a pen­du­lous look­ing oven piz­za, and she drifts lan­guorous­ly through her place of work to the melan­cholic sound of Nan­cy & Lee. It’s when Morvern starts to act impul­sive­ly that we begin to under­stand who she real­ly is. Whether it’s sub­mit­ting her dead husband’s nov­el under her name, or book­ing a hol­i­day with the mon­ey he left her.

Morvern’s deci­sion to claim the nov­el as her own in born out of a mix of anger, love and grief-strick­en irra­tional­i­ty. It is con­veyed as a major turn­ing point for her: she slow­ly over­writes her husband’s name with her own in a scene loaded with defi­ance. She sees a poten­tial way of break­ing the monot­o­ny of her life and a chance to form her true (or at least dif­fer­ent) iden­ti­ty – a thought process Ram­say makes strik­ing­ly vis­cer­al by hav­ing every key pressed with an empow­er­ing conviction.

From this moment, Morvern grap­ples far more pos­i­tive­ly with grief as she begins to accept and embrace its real­i­ty. An iron­ic use of ​‘I’m Stick­ing With You’ plays as she cleans up her blood­ied apart­ment and moves her husband’s corpse into the bath. Despite blood spray­ing her face, Ram­say, with help from The Vel­vet Underground’s gen­tle melody, por­trays the ordeal as cathar­tic and a sign of Morvern espous­ing her new iden­ti­ty. Anoth­er visu­al indi­ca­tion to her grow­ing strength is the switch from the grey of her home­town to the sun-soaked outdoors.

When Morvern arrives in Spain, she joy­ous­ly dis­cov­ers an inde­pen­dent streak in her­self that per­haps nev­er exist­ed before. She becomes more in tune with nature, and more detached from her old rou­tine. She wants to swap the pool­side hol­i­days with obnox­ious pint-slam­ming Brits for a more life-affirm­ing expe­ri­ence. A point made clear as the cam­era watch­es her observe a delib­er­ate­ly-sim­i­lar look­ing woman passed out lean­ing on a wall in a par­ty-induced mess, then opt to swig a bot­tle of water.

This desire for a more sober, authen­tic expe­ri­ence is repli­cat­ed in her ambigu­ous search for, in her own words, ​“some­thing beau­ti­ful”. Morvern wants to be lost in a for­eign coun­try as it places her out­side of her com­fort zone and away from the life she wants to leave. Although com­plete res­o­lu­tion from grief is nigh on impos­si­ble, Ram­say shows us that a seem­ing­ly ordi­nary and anguish-wracked super­mar­ket employ­ee is as capa­ble of lead­ing a rich and won­der­ful life as you are – what­ev­er posi­tion you find your­self in.