The 2002 film Morvern Callar by Lynn Ramasy we view a story of death, life and travel through the experiences of a Scottish girl after the suicide of her boyfriend. Life is unclear and bleak but something remains; the urge to keep moving forward. Much of Morvern Callar resides in the desire to keep moving. If Morvern were to ever stop it would mean that she is not only stuck in the past but she might be forever stuck to the corpse in the hallway she once called a boyfriend. For movement is not a symbol of moving on from grief in Morvern Callar but rather the break from emotional restraint and control from one body to another.
The story of Morvern Callar is one of Morvern, a Scottish girl who finds that her boyfriend, James, has committed suicide around Christmas. Leaving a novel to be published, she steals it and makes it her own and travels to Spain on vacation with her friend Lana. However this travel does not come free as Morvern has used the money for James funeral fund to do this and learned that Lana and James had an affair. As Morvern wanders we see her psychological state slip as she wanders around and never finding a clear answer to anything she sets out to do.
One key scene to embrace this idea begins at 34:30. Morvern drags James' body to the bathroom and places him within the tub. What begins in a gruesome scene of Morvern, while naked, hacking apart his lifeless body. His blood spurts back onto her form as the song “I'm Sticking With You” by The Velvet Underground plays. The scene is jarring mixing Morvern's grief with the anger she has and playing it out on his lifeless form as a sick revenge.
Yet the music that plays here is relevant and important. The lyrics refer to someone being “made of glue” and the title is called “I'm Sticking With You.” When a viewer hears this it jars them to hear a sweet sounding love song become as twisted and mutilated as the body of James. But as the blood spits back to Morvern so does his spirit.
For James has become stuck like the song implies to Morvern. As he buries him in the Moorish hills in the next scene she begins to see bugs, a reoccurring motif. The bugs, most likely roaches or things that find them selves buried in the dirt like his body is, follow her through Scotland and Spain. The become an extension of James like his blood has, they attach themselves to Morvern.
For Morvern this gives reason to her movement. With Jame's suicide he has stopped his movements and attaches to her. He leaves everything to Morvern as if to leave mementos of control to her. Though she is basically free to do what ever she pleases with the money and story he still clings to her even in death. James keeps returning through Lana, through his blood spraying onto Morvern, through the bugs in the dirt in a stranglehold. Morvern can not settle in the past, with the past. So just as she cuts his body to pieces she must cut herself into pieces as well. To keep going, to prevent an emotional suicide, Movern must make herself unstuck to all of the old and move forward.Thus we come to the resolution. Morvern Callar is such; for Morvern to keep herself from dying she must keep moving. If she does not move the blood, the bugs will stick and burrow into her and forever hold her to him.
For here movement is a break from James' control and his sins as much as it is the escape from grief. By escaping his control, both physical and emotional, can Morvern move forward with her life and attempt to find her purpose. With her movement forward we finally see a new light and thus a more clear vision of the woman that is Morvern Callar.
No comments:
Post a Comment