Morvern Callar
Brooks, Xan. Sight and Sound12. 11 (Nov 2002): 50,3.
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摘要 (概要)
翻译 摘要
"Morvern Callar" directed by Lynne Ramsay is reviewed.
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Morvern Callar
United Kingdom/ Canada 2001
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免费英语翻译软件Morvern Callar, a young supermarket worker from the west of Scotland, wakes on Christmas morning to discover that her boyfriend James has committed suicide. He leaves her a new jacket, a compilation tape and a disc containing his completed novel, with instructions to mail it to a London publisher. Before posting the manuscript, Morvern deletes fames' name and replaces it with her own. She hacks up his body in the bathtub and buries his remains in remote woodland, later telling her best friend Lanna that he has left her.
等等 英文 Using money from James' account, Morvern books herlf and Lanna on a package holiday to Spain. There the friendship breaks down and the girls argue, with Morvern spending the bulk of her time away from the resort in a nearby Spanish village. A pair of London publishers arrive and offer her £100,000 for the novel they believe to be hers.
Back in Scotland, Morvern tells Lanna she is quitting her job and moving to Spain. She asks Lanna to accompany her, but Lanna refus.
If you haven't already read the above plot synopsis, ignore it. If you have, try to forget it.
A bald run-through of a film's narrative will invariably mislead. In the ca of Morvern Callar, though, it opens the door to rampant misinterpretation. Yes, the titular heroine of Lynne Ramsay's cond feature buries her boyfriend in remote hilly wilds and lies about his whereabouts. Yes, she takes the money he t aside for his funeral and blows it on a x-and-booze holiday. Yes, she sticks her own name on his unpublished novel and pockets a cheque for £100,000. Judged on actions alone, Morvern Callar is an amoral monster. And yet one of the marvels of this opaque, haunting picture is that we never quite e her that way. Ultimately, you can't help suspecting that her deeds have an honour to them, and are motivated by a kind of love.
The abiding tone is signalled in a wordless opening reverie, as Samantha Morion's wan checkout girl runs her hands tenderly over the naked back and limbs of her dead boyfriend as the lights on the Christmas tree strobe rhythmically in the background. It's underscored by the compilation tape ("Music for You") that James has left for her, and which she listens to constantly. As she wanders through a sterile supermarket or stands inside a teeming nightclub, Morvern puts on her headphones and cranks up the volume t
o maintain a private dialogue. In so doing she effectively relegates the noisy, living world to the sidelines. She only begins to reconnect with this world, in gentle stages, during the latter part of her stay in Spain. Until then her chief communication is with a dead man.
In esnce, then, Morvern Callar is a story of love and bereavement; the study of a relationship that continues its trajectory after one party has gone. It's why its protagonist (impeccably played by Morton) ems at once so vital and so distant: physically she's there; emotionally she's conversing with someone who isn't. Perhaps it's also why - even in death - the character of fames throbs with more resonance than any of the supporting players. Kept alive through his tape and the pending impact of his (never titled, never quoted) novel, he's a far weightier prence than Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), the crude (and arguably crudely drawn) best mate who wearily exhorts Morvern to "stop dreaming" and ignores her fleeting confession about James' fate.
If Morvern Callar lacks the giddy abandon of Ramsay's 1999 debut Ratcatcher, it compensates with a confidence and maturity that confirm its creator as one of British cine
ma's brightest talents. In tandem with coscreenwriter Liana Dognini, Ramsay has sculpted a pitch-perfect adaptation of Alan Warner's acclaimed source novel. Her film is faithful to Warner's book while somehow managing to prerve its air of mystery. For all the film's raw, discomforting moments, it is also quite beautifully drawn.
So why does Morvern act as she does, plundering her lover's legacy to furnish herlf with a new life abroad? One could argue that her actions are prompted by the shock of bereavement, or a vengeful anger, or an unwillingness to become the custodian of a dead man's archive. Or perhaps she's just reluctant to let him go. Significantly, James has entrusted his manuscript to her ("This book is for you," reads his suicide note), a point echoed in the song that plays over the end credits ('Dedicated to the One I Love' by the Mamas and the Papas). Ergo: it is as intimate a thing as the compilation tape he leaves her. It could be claimed that, in posssing the book, Morvern Callar is effectively posssing James, enshrining him in the most private way possible, and merging with him to such an extent that you can't tell which is the ghost.
Xan Brooks
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you are not alone歌词翻译
avid Posssion: Samantha Morton
AuthorAffiliation
Xan Brooks is the editor of the Guardian's Film Unlimited website
Copyright British Film Institute Nov 2002
