We Need to Talk About Kevin

[bleeding heart]

Less-than-perfect title aside, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a gruelling, pain-soaked movie about mother and son, exploring the Nature vs. Nurture debate (but coming down more or less on the former). Eva, played amazingly by Tilda Swinton, wants to be a loving mother, but her son's cruelty and strangeness simply won't let her. She is not a very good mother, but the flaw could well be a reaction, rather than her true self. If anything, the broken and episodic nature of the movie aligns with Eva's shattered psychology.

The narrative is non-linear and fractured, continually cutting back and forth between Eva and Kevin (chillingly portrayed by three actors, as toddler, child, and especially as teenager, almost a Swinton lookalike). Their relationship is distant and ugly, but also profound. Eva hates him, but loves him too, and tries forever to bridge the gap while becoming terrified of her son's behaviour...until the end, a paroxysm of bloodshed that is more emotionally-wrecking than explicit.

The movie is really about Swinton's Eva, a woman who spends fifteen years trying to cope with an impossible life: her awful son, and her loving but clueless husband, played unusually straight by the usually quirky John C. Reilly, who is naive about his son't nature and unwilling to even consider the possibility that his wife's feelings are legitimate.

Because the narrative is non-linear, we also see (are subjected to) the community's hatred of Eva, as her son's murderous school attack make her a pariah; she avoids victims' mothers in grocery stores, is slapped on the street, has her house and car splashed with red paint: one component of the overwhelming blood imagery that soaks this movie in grief and estrangement.

A great movie: it's not a didactic, movie-of-the-week look at a teenaged killer; it doesn't go to pains to explain his behaviour. (He has considered the matter himself, but says he can't really figure it out.) The movie is about a woman whose son turns out to be a mass murderer, and so it "teaches" us nothing except about her grief and pain.

Edited June 6, 2012 by bleeding heart

[cybercoma]

Based on a book by the same title. A true story at that.

[August1991]

... narrative is non-linear and fractured...

The movie is really about Swinton's Eva...

WTF? This is an Internet forum, not a place for wannabe newspaper movie reviews.

With that said, I had heard of this movie and your comments make me more likely to see it.

[thoughtpolice]

it is one of the best movies of 2011, despite being unrelentingly grim.

Many people will not like it for this alone, but by not going they will miss a great performance.

Swinton cements her position as one of the best actors of her generation.

another arthouse movie that starred Swinton in a fine role and passed largely unnoticed is called 'Julia'.

[thoughtpolice]

Based on a book by the same title.

written by Lionel Shriver and IMO the book is not as good as the movie, which is rarely the case.

I have been trying to plow through another of her books, a more recent one called So Much For That, and will likely give up. She speaks from a mans perspoective for much of the book and it just does not ring true.

[BubberMiley]

WTF? This is an Internet forum, not a place for wannabe newspaper movie reviews.

WTF? I can see several less insightful wannabe newspaper movie review threads you've started for the Iron Lady, Dostana...

If you don't like it, please stop doing it.

[August1991]

WTF? I can see several less insightful wannabe newspaper movie review threads you've started for the Iron Lady, Dostana...

If you don't like it, please stop doing it.

As you English would say, "fair" point.

In the future, in Arts/Culture reviews, I promise to post more what I honestly think, and not what I suspect that a newspaper readership will consume.

----

PS: What does "fair" mean exactly?

Edited June 9, 2012 by August1991

[BubberMiley]

PS: What does "fair" mean exactly?

It's a carnival or market.

[bleeding heart]

WTF? This is an Internet forum, not a place for wannabe newspaper movie reviews.

WTF? I have read more than one of August1991's movie reviews on this very forum.

[August1991]

It's a carnival or market.

So a "fair play" is a carnival/market Shakespeare show?

WTF? I have read more than one of August1991's movie reviews on this very forum.

Avec un brin de style, I try to be honest in my movie reviews: neither pretentious nor patronising.

It's not a newspaper, it's the Internet. Or rather, it's an internet forum.

Edited June 12, 2012 by August1991

[bleeding heart]

Avec un brin de style, I try to be honest in my movie reviews: neither pretentious nor patronising.

If you're suggesting I was being pretentious and patronising in my little (and perfectly honest) review...well, then I'd feel compelled to invite you to perform a difficult and potentially dangerous sex act upon your own person.

I'd also humbly suggest that you are not totally aware of the tone and style of your own writing. Though I suppose the key word in your brief biography above is "try."

Edited June 13, 2012 by bleeding heart

[August1991]

If you're suggesting I was being pretentious and patronising in my little (and perfectly honest) review...

Your review was not honest. You were pretentious and patronising.

This is the Internet.

Now then, BH, what did you really think of this movie?

I'd also humbly suggest that you are not totally aware of the tone and style of your own writing. Though I suppose the key word in your brief biography above is "try."

Huh? I try never to patronize since I avoid italics.

----

As I always say: the greatest gift of Western Civilization is sarcasm/irony, and the Internet has sadly made this invention otiose. The Internet has turned the world into 12 year olds; Asians unable to understand irony.

The fall of Western Civilization? It is retrograde that the Internet requires smilies to do sarcasm, when a tone of voice/glance were once sufficient.

--

Sarcasm. If you're a Westerner, try sarcasm on an Eastern friend. Yet better, try irony.

If you do it right, I reckon that even Russell Peters will be amused. Irony, apparently, is Peters' latest schtick among western immigrants.

Edited June 14, 2012 by August1991

[bleeding heart]

EDITED.

Kimmy answered all this (and so many other review posts, going back quite some distance) much better in the "Prometheus" thread, and I don't wish to dilute it with my own remarks.

Edited June 19, 2012 by bleeding heart