Good Grief

How do you deal with grief? Most of us have experienced this at some point in our lives. A pet dying, a relationship ending, the death of a loved one or family member can all cause immense grief. But how is it shown?

I ask this because I recently watched a movie that dealt with this subject in a very refreshing and honest way. This film has been sitting on my TV for ages, and I have not been able to bring myself to watch it. Finally, last night my bf said we had to watch it as it had been up there almost 2 weeks, so I gave in and we put in Lynne Ramsay’s “Morvern Callar”.

Morvern wakes up on Christmas morning to find her lover dead on the floor in the door way to the kitchen. He has killed himself. He has only left her his ATM card and a note on his computer that begins "Sorry Morvern. Don't ask why. It just felt like the right thing to do."

As a pathetic Christmas tree blinks gloomily in the back-ground, the trauma-detached Morvern runs her hands over the cold body trying to connect with her emotions as the truth of what has happened sinks into her. She lays in the bath submerging herself fully, perhaps to cry privately so he can’t see.
She then gets ready to go on a night on the town with her friends, leaving the body in the flat. She gets drunk, does drugs and has sex yet tells no one and ends up home again in time for her job at the supermarket. She leaves the body there for about three days telling people he has left her. Then she checks his bank balance of over £3,000 and reads the rest of his note. There are funeral instructions and a manuscript for the book he is working on and a list of publishers for her to send it to.

She deletes his name and adds hers, sending it off to a publisher in London.

She decides to dispose of the body and withdraws the money from his account and takes off with a friend to Spain.

To the viewer this may seem like crazy behaviour, and it almost does as Ramsey and Morton never let you into Morvens’ mind. She is not explained to the viewer, we have to make her own mind up.
Is she crazy, or is she angry at the egotism and selfishness of her lovers act? For him to do such a thing showed how unimportant she was to him, leaving her in a dead end job at a supermarket on an island off Scotland. Leaving her to clean up his mess. Leaving her.

Was she a cold person? Was she completely selfish or did she see this as perhaps an opportunity at a new life, a better life? Perhaps fueled by anger she decided not to clean up his mess and continue his life for him, but rather give herself a new one.

For much of the film Morvern is alone. We get the sense that she is alone with her feelings, but not her thoughts. She is in a state that is not quite present, she is disengaged from what is going on around her. She cannot even relate to her best friend in the same way, she is stuck in neutral, the operator has put her on hold.

Had another actress played this role the film would have failed. Samantha Morton has a face that conveys so much with nary a movement. Her eyes tell a story. This is something not many actresses have the ability to do. Her most accomplished roles “Sweet and Lowdown”, “Minority Report”, “In America” have relied, not on her speaking lines of dialogue, but by her eyes painting the unspoken pain, joy, love and hurt across her face.
We watch her so carefully in this film because she is capable of embodying an entire whirlwind of emotional privacy.

Ramsey also deserves much credit for not taking the easy route. She stays true to the disconnect of the character, making the film feel like a disconnect. Only once you are alone with the film can you slowly start to understand the way two talented women have decided to portray grief.

Unsurprisingly the film did not play well. Audiences today seem to need wailing and tears to understand pain and heartache. We are not all made that way, and thankfully Ramsey and Morton know this too.