Director Watch Podcast Ep. 15 – ‘Morvern Callar’ (Ramsay, 2002)

Welcome to Director Watch! On this AwardsWatch podcast, co-hosts Ryan McQuade and Jay Ledbetter attempt to breakdown, analyze, and ultimately, get inside the mind of some of cinema’s greatest auteurs. In doing so, they will look at their filmographies, explore what drives them artistically and what makes their decision-making process so fascinating. Add in a few silly tangents and a fun game at the end of the episode and you’ve got yourself a podcast we truly hope you love. On episode 15 of the Director Watch Podcast, the boys discuss the next film in their Lynne Ramsay series, Morvern Callar (2002).

Three years after making her feature film debut, Lynne Ramsay returned with another fascinating character study in Morvern Callar, which follows a young woman whose life completely changes for better and worse following the suicide of her boyfriend. Based on the novel by Alan Warner, Ramsay and her co-writer Liana Dognini took the experimental nature of the book and expanded the scope of who this protagonist is and created a fascinating look into the life of someone who is making things up as they go in order to run away from their grief. Led by an extraordinary performance from Samantha Morton, Ryan and Jay discuss the vibrant direction by Ramsay, Morvern’s decision making process and how it fits within the rules of the film, the unsettled feeling they both had watching the film, and how this was their first experience using Freevee to watch a movie with commercials.

You can listen to the Director Watch Podcast wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more.

This podcast runs 1h22m. The guys will be back next week to continue their series covering the films of Lynn Ramsay with a review of her third feature film, We Need to Talk About Kevin. You can stream We Need to Talk About Kevin on Amazon Prime Video, as well as rent it via iTunes and Amazon Prime rental in preparation for the next episode of Director Watch. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: MUSICALIFE, from Pond5 (intro) and “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro)