Without judgment
a feminist reading of the immanent ethics and aesthetics in morvern callar
pp. 255-268
in: Silke Panse, Dennis Rothermel (eds), A critique of judgment in film and television, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Lynne Ramsey's film Morvern Callar (2002) begins with an extreme close-up of a face and hand. The main character Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) is lying on her side gently stroking something indiscernible. The shot is close and moves in and out of focus slightly. As the Christmas lights switch off and on, the image dips to black and then reappears. Morvern stares blankly into space as her hand moves down frame. Her eyes close and her face caresses something. When it comes into focus, we see it is the back of the neck of her dead boyfriend. The couple are lying on the floor in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, where he has committed suicide. Her hand slowly moves down his arm until we see the cuts on his wrist. This is followed by a long shot of her lying near the body. She lifts her hand in the light and looks at it. We see her hand in close-up as she places it on his back, and, barely touching the skin, moves it down and across to his wounded arm.