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Movie Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Gregory Fichter

The frustrating irony of We Need to Talk About Kevin is that no one gets around to actually talking about the brooding, sociopathic Kevin until he has become fodder for editorials, hand-wringing, and misdirected anger once he has unleashed his inborn rage against classmates and family. A horror film of sorts but one grounded in inescapable current affairs, We Need to Talk About Kevin is Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s abstract interpretation of Lionel Shriver’s bestselling novel concerning a child born to an indifferent mother growing up to be an emotionless killer. In another’s hands, the source material would lend itself to uninspired TV movie-style direction and eventually be plopped onto the OWN Network, but writer/director Ramsay is one of the true original dramatists to emerge from the next generation of filmmakers; her first two features (Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002)) defied the expectations of narrative filmmaking by telling symbolically elusive slices of life with a youthful restlessness. We Need to Talk About Kevin continues this approach at the risk of alienating the book’s ardent fans.

Effortlessly editing back and forth in a winding timeline, the film gives us glimpses of the complex psychological combat between mother and son right from the outset in which Kevin’s birth is portrayed as a wailing argument between two bodies that blossoms into outright contempt as the boy hardens into adolescence. Androgynous young Ezra Miller (TV’s Californication) sharply perfects the demanding role of Kevin in his boiling-over teenage years and proves an ideal sparring partner for Tilda Swinton as his cold, bohemian mother Eva. After her career as a free spirit travel writer is interrupted by Kevin’s arrival, Eva shows early signs of indifference to the boy in some great scenes with the young sinister kid (Jasper Newell as the scowling tot). Knowing what Kevin will eventually unleash hangs over these fruitless attempts at bonding (Kevin refuses to roll back a ball; he stays mute until late in life). Unafraid to be seen as unlikeable, Swinton is tasked with showing frustrated disdain instead of motherly concern. In the Lifetime movie someone a lot less sinewy and brittle as Swinton would likely take on the role, but would not do it the same thoughtful, stoic justice.

Rounding out the crack cast, John C. Reilly plumbs his Everyman persona in the fuzzy role of the doting, enabling father of a boy he refuses to see through. Kevin is a bastard to his little sister, animals, and especially his mother but dad just encourages him to keep honing his fateful marksman skills with arrows in the sprawling suburban backyard. Ramsay’s role as a European outsider serves her well in dissecting the thick nuclear family façade to see the unease within; an emotional state of chaos is inferred through the numerous Jackson Pollack-style splashes of color and oversaturation of light (Kevin’s pillow resembles a Pollack, the little boy throws paint all over his mother’s work, scenes are bathed in red, etc.). A full enjoyment of Ramsay’s mastery is not possible without making these pointed connections.

Tilda Swinton in “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

Unlike the Nancy Grace’s of the world, Lynne Ramsay does not wag her tongue at societal dysfunction and tragedy; she avoids kneejerk diagnoses by abruptly cutting scenes and beginning new ones in the aftermath of things and working back from violence into a clear-eyed investigation. Much of the film takes place in the present moment as Eva plays the martyr by remaining in the same town as a whipping post for the community’s grief. Swinton is a hollow-eyed shell with little dialogue as she is confronted by people still bearing her son’s injuries.

Don’t let the weighty subject matter keep you away from a film that never becomes as exploitative and offensive as elements of Gus Van Sant’s over praised Elephant (which used Columbine as its reference). We Need to Talk About Kevin has the luxury of being fiction and thus is easier to watch as a biting, brilliantly acted piece of dramatic entertainment made by an artist with an exciting visual and sonic pallet fashioning cinematic order out of our grim social chaos.

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Gregory Fichter

Greg toiled for years in the hallowed bowels of the legendary Thomas Video and has studied cinema as part of the Concentration for Film Studies and Aesthetics at Oakland University. He has hosted the cult movie night "Celluloid Sundays" at The Belmont in Hamtramck, MI. and enjoys everything from High Trash to Low Art.

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