Episode 25: Anwen Crawford
This month on The Allender Calendar I'm talking to the writer and visual artist Anwen Crawford. I met Anwen when she guested on The Clientele Podcast a few years ago and we stayed in touch. Anwen has such a precise and vivid way of writing, mixing personal biography with critical analysis. Her latest book, Morvern Callar, published by Fireflies Press, is about the 2002 film Morvern Callar, Lynne Ramsay's second feature film, which stars Samantha Morton. The film is based on the 1995 novel Morvern Callar by Alan Warner. These doublings/triplings (note Morton/Morvern!) are perhaps appropriate for a film that, as Anwen notes, contains 'eerie, impeded doublings – Morvern and the viewer, Morvern and the boyfriend, Morvern and herself'. The plot of Morvern Callar is decidedly gruesome, and yet the film is strangely hypnotic, moving, and darkly funny; a cinematic style that Anwen calls 'lyric realism'. We talk about how Anwen came to write the book, the differences between the film and the novel, and Samantha Morton's mesmeric performance as the title character. Content note: the plot of Morvern Callar hinges on a suicide, and we discuss that in this episode. You can buy the book from the Fireflies Press website here: https://firefliespress.com/Morvern-Callar Anwen's website: https://demandspopular.net/ If you want to support the podcast, you can buy me a coffee here: https://buymeacoffee.com/robinallender Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.