Morvern Callar

death, literature, insects and spain — how many books might be gathered around these four words? books written by contagion, that unfold into one another. books that became bodies and bodies that became books — ceasing to be bodies and books, becoming hybrids.

contrary to what marguerite duras said — that because they write, writers have no life («to write is to be nobody. a dead person, as thomas mann said») — morvern callar, not because she writes, but through writing, gains a new life.

writing, in this case, is not production or fixation, but legacy. the writer is, in fact, a dead person. however, by obtaining another name, they obtain a new identity and, consequently, a new body, and also a new life. the dead person becomes a ghost writer. and morvern becomes an author — because, sometimes, being an author is not a consequence of the act of writing, it is inhabiting the place of writing.

it is no coincidence that she goes to spain — the place of writing par excellence, because it is also the place of death: the country of baroque saints, tortured mystics, living christs, bulls pierced by swords before ecstatic crowds, flamenco — the slow, funereal and melancholic seguiriyas —, all covered in blood. the spain that fascinated bataille, hemingway, cioran — «because», as the latter wrote, «it offered the most spectacular example of failure. the greatest country in the world reduced to such a state of decay». and failure permeates everything — all great ideas can collapse. books, films, institutions, loves, political systems — everything can fail. and it does fail. greatness is not immune to decay.

the suicide note that morvern's boyfriend leaves her says: «i wrote it for you». and she seems to decide to take those words literally — overlooking his possible posthumous fame. it is not obvious what motivates her. and the film seems to refuse to offer any explanations. its silence is more eloquent than any statement. what it does does not seem to be the result of a plan, although it is — it is more of an intuition, a kind of transfiguration. there is a certain sophistication in her actions. a kind of calm and courage that does not fit in with heroic gestures. there is no drama, just a prolonged state of presence. morvern is a ripleyan reflection (although she does not lie like him, she dodges) for her ability to be precise, to distance herself, to absorb and recreate another life. they are not just impostors — they are also authors. only they use other means to write. they write with their whole body, transforming absence into narrative. in other words, they write with actions — more through gesture than language.

still literature, still death: i cannot help thinking of kafka — who famously wrote about someone who wakes up transformed into an insect — when morvern follows a cockroach through the hotel corridors until she finds another kind of reflection: someone else also in mourning. the cockroach as a common thread — a line connecting two bodies touched by death. and still lispector: «the cockroach and i are infernally free because our living matter is greater than us, we are infernally free because my own life is so little fitting inside my body that i cannot use it. my life is used more by the earth than by me, i am so much greater than what i used to call “me” that only by having the life of the world would i have myself.»

what, in other hands, would be a crime, is here a form of survival. perhaps it is important not to forget that, before being a film, morvern callar was (and continues to be) a book — written by alan warner — and that this book reflects the precariousness of the world it portrays. as professor romain nguyen van suggested in an article he wrote about morvern callar, it is a novel that exposes the neoliberalisation of life from within: where work, the body and language inhabit the same unstable and precarious territory — without community, without support. only fragments. divisions. silences.

the truth is that the money her boyfriend had in his account, and the money she later receives as an advance for the publication of the book, allows morvern to escape poverty and provincialism — something that, unlike her best friend, she actually wants to do.

morvern callar is a book that someone wrote, it is a book within a book that has come to life, it is also a film, a character, an actress — for posing as the author — and an insect that discovers it can be free. practical and hellishly free.