Review of We Need to Talk About Kevin, starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller.
We Need to Talk About Kevin dazzles on the strength of Tilda Swinton's incredible performance.
The collaborative art of moviemaking is a wonderful mystery that sometimes disappoints, and when creative talent partners perfectly, results in something magical. The idea of actress Tilda Swinton joining filmmaker Lynne Ramsay on an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel We Need to Talk About Kevin leads to great expectations. They exceed all hopes and deliver a fantastic family drama that's substantial, complex, real and powerful from start to finish.
It's been close to nine years of stalled projects and setbacks for the Scottish filmmaker but Ramsay returns with the best work of an already impressive career. We Need to Talk About Kevin is youthful, high- energy filmmaking with beautiful photography and brilliant color thanks to cameraman Seamus McGarvey. Yet, while the film dazzles the eye, Ramsay and Rory Kinnear, her co-writer and husband, match the visual artistry with a tense family drama that's about the concerned mother as much as the troubled son in the title. Eva (Swinton) does not know how to help her teenage son Kevin (Ezra Miller) as his behavior turns more vicious. She receives little help from her husband (John C. Reilly) who’s convinced she’s picking on their son. As Kevin’s mood turns darker, Eva begins to blame her own conflicts about motherhood and giving up her creative life to become a suburban mom as the reason behind Kevin’s emotional problems.
Ramsay places intimate, powerful moments throughout the movie. In once scene, Eva walks in on Kevin and catched him masturbating. Kevin taunts his mother to watch him with a flash of his dark sense of humor.
Ezra Miller plays Kevin as comically cruel, slyly sinister and utterly tragic. Miller's performance raises the film's core question of whether children are born bad or whether something happens during childrearing to make them that way.
John C. Reilly's performance emphasizes the fractured family dynamics as Kevin’s parents slowly separate to opposite sides regarding what to do about their troubled teenage son.
The film rotates around Tilda Swinton who shows Eva as both strong and beaten-down. She’s a sympathetic advocate for her son but also his victim. As the film shifts from present-day events to Kevin as a toddler, or back further to Eva’s pre-motherhood life, Swinton brings all the various chapters together into one emotional story.
Ramsay creates high tension and well-placed shocks throughout the movie, so much so that at times We Need to Talk About Kevin feels like a horror film. Thankfully, Ramsay pulls back from full-scale scares and the movie never becomes overly melodramatic.
We Need to Talk About Kevin hits hard because of the events around us, the recent violence at the summer camp in Norway, the shootings at Virginia Tech University and of course, the Columbine High School massacre.
Wisely, delicately, Ramsay lets the climactic violence at home and the Columbine-like event at Kevin's high school unfold with a dizzy numbness. It’s a bit unreal for Eva and us due to her state of disbelief.
Color, editing, camera placement and set design all come together brilliantly as Ramsay builds upon the artistry from her earlier features Ratcatcher, a childhood drama set in Glasgow in the '70s; and Morvern Callar, about a young girlfriend (Samantha Morton) dealing with her novelist boyfriend's suicide.
We Need to Talk About Kevin is artful but less experimental that Ramsay’s previous features. Ramsay emphasizes story and character like never before and We Need to Talk About Kevin becomes that rare film where technique and emotion come together beautifully.
It's worth noting that We Need to Talk About Kevin is the movie that came to be after Ramsay lost out directing Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones to Peter Jackson.
We’ll never know what Ramsay might have done with Lovely Bones but We Need to Talk About Kevin is a movie for the ages.
Distributor: Oscilloscope Laboratories
Cast: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
Screenwriter: Katherine Fugate
Editor: Joe Bini
Cinematographer: Seamus McGarvey
Costume Designer:
Composer: Jonny Greenwood
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Producers: Independent Film Company, BBC Films, UK Film Council, Rockinghorse Films, Artina Films, Running Time: 112 minutes
Rating: Rated R
Release Date: December 9, 2011 in select theaters; opens wide January 2012 (Showtimes & Tickets)
We Need to Talk About Kevin SYNOPSIS:
A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, Lynne Ramsay’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores the factious relationship between a mother and her evil son. Tilda Swinton, in a bracing, tour-de-force performance, plays the mother, Eva, as she contends for 15 years with the increasing malevolence of her first-born child, Kevin (Ezra Miller).
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores nature vs. nurture on a whole new level as Eva's own culpability is measured against Kevin's innate evilness. Ramsay's masterful storytelling simultaneously combines a provocative moral ambiguity with a satisfying and compelling narrative, which builds to a chilling, unforgettable climax.