By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.9
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Starring: Ashley Gerasimovich | Ezra Miller | Jasper Newell | John C. Reilly | Rock Duer | Tilda Swinton
Country: united_kingdom, united_states
Year: 2012
Running time: 112
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/
Jason says: “At no point during WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN are the words of the title actually spoken, but it’s not like it would have made a difference if they were. There’s just nothing you can do about some situations – they play out in horrifying slow motion, and even when the endgame seems inevitable, most people have a hard time actually believing it. It’s terrible, but in the skilled hands of director Lynn Ramsay and star Tilda Swinton, also engrossing.
“Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) was once a happy and successful travel writer/editor, but that was before Kevin. Now, in the wake of what her teen-age son (Ezra Miller) has done, she’s a pariah in her small Connecticut town, doing filing at a storefront travel agency and hoping that having red paint thrown at her house is as bad as her day gets. What makes it worse is that this didn’t entirely come out of the blue for Eva; Kevin has been a monster from the start, but has had his father Franklin (John C. Reilly) snowed, manipulating him practically since birth, only showing his true face to Eva. Inevitably, their opposing views of their son will make their marriage a slow-motion train wreck, one more casualty of Kevin.
“Or is it in fact more complicated? Almost the entire film is seen from Eva’s perspective, and while there is nothing that particularly hints that she is an unreliable narrator who changes details to make herself look less culpable (or more so, depending on her mood), what Ramsay shows us is designed to get the audience thinking in a way similar to Eva. Sure, some kids may just be born bad, but does that come from the same genes as give Eva her own short temper, and does that mean the townspeople are right to treat her like she’s the monster? As psychotically difficult a child as Kevin was, and how he occasionally manipulated Eva into feeling direct guilt for specific actions, she does some things that a parent clearly shouldn’t – if she’d done better, would things have been different? It’s impossible to know, and Ramsay makes sure it can’t be otherwise: She and co-writer Rory Kinnear (working from Lionel Shriver’s novel) draw few lines between particular events in Kevin’s childhood and the young man he becomes, with the most obvious being so far-fetched that it’s as impossible to credit as it’s meant to be.
“With Eva in nearly every scene, Tilda Swinton has got to be good, and she is, not surprisingly given her body of work, great. The movie cuts between Eva before and after a major turning point in her life, one which causes her circumstances, attitudes, and emotional baseline to change completely, and yet it’s quite easy to see that her core is still the same, despite her being shaken to it. There’s a hardness to both Evas that masks a strong desire to get along, and that sort of paradox is at the cornerstone of Swinton’s performance: We get the sense that Eva is a tightly controlled, formidable woman, and yet we constantly see her at the mercy of powerful, assaulting emotions. It’s genuinely amazing to watch Swinton put us through the wringer with Eva from minute one.
“She’s joined by a good cast, most notably Ezra Miller, who plays Kevin as a teenager. He’s pure, angry malice, able to hold his own with Swinton while still showing us a guy who is raw and still easily impressed with himself. Also worth mentioning are Jasper Newell and Rock Duer, who play Kevin when he’s younger; Ramsay coaxes performances out of them that suggest evil kids, whereas many psychopathic children in movies tend to come across as too precocious, imitations of adults. There’s also nice work from John C. Reilly, whose character’s obliviousness at times recalls his more comedic roles, but with just a sharp enough edge that he must be taken seriously.
“Lynn Ramsay, meanwhile, maintains an incredible level of focus, never once going for twists when crushing, horrible inevitability is an option. She cuts back and forth in time in a way that lets the story come out clearly, only keeping the audience guessing on the exact chronology once or twice. If there’s one fault, it’s the occasional use of ironic music and sound choices, which might be clever in another movie, but this isn’t really a pop-culture commentary picture. Still, that doesn’t come close to undercutting the movie’s effectiveness.
“Friends and family with young kids: Don’t see this movie for, like, twenty years; you don’t need to even think about the sort of doubt Eva has in her life. Everyone else, though, should hope its unexpected Oscar snub doesn’t hamper its distribution too much; the work of Swinton and Ramsay in particular is mesmerizing. 4.75 cats
“Seen 5 February 2012 at the Harvard Film Archive (Lynn Ramsay, 35mm)”
Thom says: “After RATCATCHER and MORVERN CALLAR director Ramsay certainly has credentials although she’s not grabbed my attention until this film, my rush to see largely due to the must-see presence of Tilda Swinton. I had very high expectations for this after it was denied me at TIFF 2011. This film is another that uses non-linear time, to great effect here. The Khatchadourians have moved from New York to a huge house in the suburbs where they are raising a son, Kevin, and later a daughter, Celia. It’s apparent that Kevin in all his incarnations toddler, 6-8 years-old, & teenager) (well-cast, and beautifully acted by Duer, Newell, & Miller) is a nasty, sadistic boy that is well on his way to being a sociopath. Along the way his dad patiently teaches him to be an ace at archery (no Green Arrow renaissance here) which is his weapon of choice when the violence begins. Along the way he continually psychologically tortures his mother while pulling-the-wool over pop’s eyes. Swinton (winner of the Best Actress award in 2011 from San Francisco film critics for this) is breathtaking, as always, having to show grief, solitude. loneliness, and bewilderment. Even her dreams of travel are pitifully carried out by her job in a travel agency. Splotches of red appear in many of the scenes, thrown across her travel maps in her ‘special’ room, across the ramshackle house she lives in after the tragedy where hecklers have persistently abused her, across a gym floor, on a piece of bread. The beginning dream has her trapped amidst a stampede running through what looks like muddy blood. What finally detracts from the film is the horrible, grim, unrelenting pall that covered the entire film. I felt trapped and defeated. There wasn’t one light scene in the entire film and I left the theatre exhausted, yet exhilarated by Swinton. Reilly wasn’t quite as strong as needed, and a bit of a cipher. 4 1/2 cats”
Bruce says: “While viewing WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, I was constantly reminded of Gus Van Sant’s brilliant ELEPHANT. Both films deal with teenage boys committing inexplicable acts. After seeing Van Sant’s film I felt that I understood what happened and how it all came down, at the same time knowing I would never understand why. In her 1999 film RATCATCHER , Lynne Ramsay created a patchwork quilt of desperation and alienation as she depicted the horrific life of children from the lower rungs of Scottish society. Her dreary Glasgow landscape explained much of what happens in the film – nothing in RATCATCHER is beyond comprehension. Ramsay attempts to do the same with WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. This time around she is much less effective. What happened and how are provided in snippets, leaving the viewer with nothing upon which to draw much of an opinion or develop an emotional response.
“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN has a gripping plot. A mother’s life is destroyed by the monstrous act of a son she never could properly handle and may never have loved. Perhaps Ramsay is too ambitious in her taking on the mother’s story, the son’s story, the incident itself and its aftermath in a non-narrative way. Or perhaps a patchwork style is not a good match for her subject matter. Ramsay also uses repetition to an annoying degree. Many bits and pieces were obvious at first glance and positively infuriating the fifth or sixth time around. Her other curious stylistic decision was to make absolutely everything red, red, red – blood, stuffed toys, houses, cars, chairs, buttons, buildings, dress, digital time, Japanese maple, plaid shirt, stripes on pillows, flag for jackhammer, table cloth, tomato soup, sweater, pills, shirt, ball, paint gun, candle, ketchup, bathrobe, pajamas and more blood. Overuse is the only word that comes to mind.
“Saddled with newborn Kevin’s perpetual crying – ‘Crying like he can’t stand being alive,’ is difficult for mother Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton). Swinton is a marvelous actress. Her talent for conveying emotion and feeling serves the story well; however she has little opportunity to delve into any one scene. The average scene length can be measured in seconds, not minutes; consequently the dialogue is fragmented. When Kevin first begins to talk Eva asks Kevin, ‘Say mommy.’ ‘No,’ is the only response.
“Kevin is thoroughly examined by doctors who declare his hearing is fine, there are no signs of autism and, in the final analysis, ‘there is nothing wrong with him.’ In another scene Eva says ‘just because you’ve used to something doesn’t mean you like it.’ ‘You’re used to me,’ Kevin muses. All this adds up to a disturbed mother with a problem child. ‘Mommy was happy before Kevin came along,’ certainly is a telling remark for a mother to make to a small boy.
“In the end Eva is saddled with the consequences, losing everything including her self-respect. She is a shattered woman, shunned by society. It is curious that she does not move away from her tragedy to start another life. That may be the most telling thing of all in a film that paints a fuzzy picture. 3 cats”
Hilary responds: “In a word: YES. Or as Ramsay would say: yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes…
“I would love to see Swinton and Ezra Miller in a better film. They had some genuinely creepy chemistry and interplay that had me hoping for more. And ultimately disappointed.” 2 1/2 cats
Toni says: “I really liked the tone of this film and normally don’t really care for Lynn Ramsay (even John C. Reilly’s straight laced character)…this was a little atypical I think for her. 4.5 cats”