Partly in order to have a balance in my view toward “weirdo girl” movie, I rented this movie too at Tsutaya together with Amelie. Something must have told me those two movies sit in the opposite end of the “weirdo” spectrum. I think the two main characters, Amelie and Morvern will never, ever get along with each other. They live in different world is an old cliche but in this case, that articulates well.
I liked this girl(played by always fantastic Samantha Morton), who rarely talks, rarely express her emotion, works at a supermarket, witness her boyfriend commited suicide, steal the credit from his novel(which is dedicated to her) and sell it to the book agent as the author, cut off his body in pieces and bury them in the mountain. And she was not treated as a weirdo. Or as Samantha Morton told in an interview (included in the DVD as one of the special features),
(Talking about the director) It’s really brave..to talk about the girl without making her too weird.
I like Morvern because she is a strong creature. Maybe she has a different kind of humanity than most people, but she is strong. She is strong because she doesn’t get panicked over her bofriend’s dead body, doesn’t cry all day, keeps her day job as usual…. she just continues to live. She is not cruel either. She steals money and credit from the dead, but not from the alive. Talking about dead, I watched the trailer of the remake version of the classic zombie movie Dawn of the dead. The introduction part is fantastic, where the father is attacked by his little girl who has already been transformed into a creature looking for human flesh. I did have a nightmare after seeing it. But the latter half of the trailer seems to be revealing too much of the movie. Not a good sign. But this time the zombies run. Good.
Back to Morven Caller. It reminded me of another movie, The Grifters.
In the last scene, Angelica Huston witness her son’s death, crying all over yet collects the scattered bank notes and run away to get off the cops. I didn’t feel she was a ruthless person. Maybe yes, but rather I saw the presense of a strong person. I think that is the kind of strength only the female can possess.
But the two movies have one common thing: they are equally boring (or doesn’t cause a deep emotional turbulance).
There is not much of a plot and Samatha Morton is a fantastic actress but I couldn’t keep my attention for long. Maybe it was too serious. Not necessary dark, but everything is expressed plainly, as a matter of fact style. And no humor, probably purposefully. Watching probablly a great movie and don’t emphasize makes me feel like getting furthur away from the world of art. Recently I felt that in Mori art museum.