Morvern Callar

I find it a bit odd that this movie is so praised for it's soundtrack when almost every song (with the notable exception of the last scene) is cut off right before it gets going. Maybe this has something to do with the music as "his music"--that is, Morvern's boyfriend who is dead by suicide. As such it seems like a message from beyond the grave, more substantial than the rather pedestrian suicide note she discovers. Key early scene (as shown above) shows Morvern literally lying with the dead, and I suspect in some ways the film charts her journey from life to death, isolated and mundane experience to triumphant self-abandonment.

The slow, almost terminal, style of the film is often hypnotic (as intended) and almost as often plain boring (not intended). Morvern is absolutely unreadable (intended, I think). She has crossed over, and in particular the shot of her turning away from us and walking towards a graveyard seems to suggest that whatever knowledge she has is impossible to translate into words. Near the end, there is a long shot of Morvern in a phonebooth, and the effect is curiously like she is in an upright coffin. I kind of wished for some Grand Statement about death or mortality, but then what's there to say?