"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a British/American co-production from 2011, so this 110-minute movie is getting closer and closer to its 10th anniversary. The writer and director is Scottish (then not yet) BAFTA winner Lynne Ramsay and this movie here is probably still her most known work by far if we look at the number of votes on imdb, but also if we look at awards recognition. Oscar winner Tilda Swinton here got as close as it gets to her second Academy Award nomination, but just like Daniel Brühl and Idris Elba she had to learn the hard way that sometimes GG, BAFTA and SAG award nominations are not enough to also get in at the Oscars, even if it doesn't happen too often. Here pretty much Rooney Mara sneaked in over her. That should be all in terms of awards now. Let's take a look at the film. It is really all about Swinton. Short mentions to supporting players John C. Reilly (as the husband here a bit surprising as I expected a British actor) and Ezra Miller, who was already despite his age a pretty prolific actor at that point. Now it is arguable if he's really supporting as he plays the title character, but so do other actors and honestly, overall this film is nobody's but Swinton's, not only because she is in basically every scene.
This is the story of a mother who really struggles to find love and affection for her son. We see this in obvious moments and more subtle scenes. The most obvious is certainly when she talks to her son and he is still pretty young and says something along the lines that he basically destroyed her life and she'd rather be childless in Paris right now. The fact that her husband hears these words makes it even more awkward for everybody involved. As for the more subtle scenes, I want to mention one that is rather minor, but really stayed in my mind for some reason, namely when they returned home and Kevin has his broken arm and she talks to him and says something along the lines of "what your mother did was really really bad". She does not say I. She talks of herself in the third person. An apology with "I" would have felt far more authentic and personal in my opinion. Also even with all the bad Kevin is doing, we need to keep in mind that Eva (Swinton) is far from a saint herself here. Her words on obese people are as offensive (are they true? for you to decide) as some actions and words directed at her son and other people. You will know what I mean when you see those. However, this should not lead away from the conclusion that the only real antagonist here is Kevin. There is a saying that high intelligence can get in the way of finding true happiness and I think this description also fits him. We see during the ball training as a child and when we hear him say all these numbers that he definitely has a high IQ, even if he is a sociopath and at the very end he says some line that is as brief as it is memorable about being happy. I could probably elaborate on about 20 scenes at least here how we see he is a psychopath from the very beginning. Okay not when he is a baby, even if it was probably no coincidence that he won't stop screaming in the arms of his mother, but acts peacefully when held by his father. But the ball scene I already mentioned is very telling. He knows exactly what to do, but he does not want to make his mother happy. And when he does for a moment, then he only does so that he can disappoint her right afterwards again. The kitchen scene is of course really painful to watch for me as a guinea pig owner myself. But yeah causing harm to animals at a relatively young age is always considered a recurring event for people who commit homicide later on in life. The sister's eye is also really obvious and maybe we don't even want to know exactly what happened there. It's easy to imagine with how he acts towards his sister on other occasions like the hair scene is one good example. But he is really as cold and void of emotions and love as he is to everybody else. Including his dad? Yes including his dad too. At times, it seems as if he has a better connection with him, but really with what happens at the very end, we find out it was all make-believe. He sees him as weak and not worthy of living and probably the moments Kevin acts nicer to him are only mostly so that he will keep training archery with him. Now I just mentioned what happens to the dad and sister at the very end and that was really heartbreaking honestly. One of the moments that will shake you honestly. More because of the girl than the father admittedly, but still. Another scene that had me on the edge of my seat was when Eva arrives at the school knowing a massacre had happened and when she sees the way how the doors are closed, she realizes her son is the culprit. She does not need to see him seconds later, but of course as we see him surrender to police it makes the moment even more intense with the smile on his lips and clearly he enjoys the fact that his mother is there to see what he did. She is always his target in terms of punishing her emotionally, not violently as with everybody else, especially at the ending.
There is of course the scene with the broken arm again that is a prime example. He does not tell anybody what Eva really did and what happened, so he basically has something to use against her whenever he wants. And he does so, even on minor occasions just to push through with his preferences as we see when he scratches on the scar and Eva agrees to go home then and not to do some quick shopping. He just enjoys to torture his mother all the time. There is of course that masturbation scene when every other boy his age would have stopped immediately and would have been really ashamed, but he just keeps going and starts to grin. More scenes that fit the description: Like when she finds out what happened to the guinea-pig and he realizes she just found it and the way he looks at her. Or when he early on really misses the mark with his arrow and then the next shot perfectly would have hit his mother without the glass in-between. This is a film that can be talked about a lot. After the initial reaction is gone, that is. Nobody was moving until after the closing credits rolled in because as good as this film may have been, it is certainly among the most depressing movies you will ever watch. Could he have been stopped? What could have been done differently? We have moments that involve Reilly's character when we see him react in an apologetic way, of course the baby scene early on, but also a very specific moment later on when she actually says that Kevin did it (I think it was about the guinea pig) and his reaction is that maybe she should talk to somebody, so the moment she slightly asks for help, she gets a response that she is just overreacting and she is the one who is unstable. This probably also has to do with Kevin sucking up to his dad, even if admittedly the litchi/eyeball scene really could not have been any more telling. But it also shows the father's helplessness somehow.
As for the technical aspects, I have seen more by Ramsay and felt her style was very easy to identify. The home video looks are not uncommon for her, also that her films frequently look older than they actually are. Or also the use of fast-forward on some occasions. It is not the first time she includes time lapse. I am not sure how she does with chronology in other films, here it is really all over the place if we look at jumps in time and there is hardly any chronology in here. The scenes that take place after the massacre are easy to identify at least because of the red color on the house and on the car. This made it a bit easier, but it sure took me a while to get used to these constant jumps in time. It's alright though. The overall impact is not too negative on the movie. Maybe it is even better the way she did it from the storytelling perspective than if she went fully chronological and me saying this sure means something because in general I almost always prefer chronology. But it also maybe makes the film a better rewatch (I don't even know if you want to rewatch with how depressing it all is) because when you find out at the end about the dead two people at the house, it gives a whole new perspective to Eva's grief, even if she was about to get divorced already. And see things and scenes differently that were depicted before that in the film. I have not read the Lionel Shriver book this is based on, so I cannot say how chronology was handled there or if Ramsay just implemented it here (or the lack thereof) and also not make any other comparisons between book and movie. But certainly the way it turned out here, this is how you should adapt a book that people finally stop with the eternal nonsense criticism à la "The book is always better." What stays the most from this film (except Swinton's turn) are really all the ways in which the boy is depicted as evil. So it came as a bit of a surprise that towards the end, there is always a little bit of hope as we hear his last words that he is no longer sure his motivations were the right ones. And the following hug of course. Maybe a jail term can actually turn somebody into a better human again and not just protect society. At least in this case. Anyway, this glimmer of hope went so strongly against all the calculated viciousness from before that. Also if you take the fact that he commited the brutal crime just very briefly before his 16th anniversary that his prison sentence will not be too long and there is a specific mention of that approach from the mother and also that he took drugs before that in order to create doubts about his sane mind. The irony of saying "sane mind" with all he did sure is priceless. And even if this is a very dark movie, there are one or two occasions of pretty dark comedy too (no arrow collecting, Jehova's Witnesses). All in all, a big thumbs-up for this film. Very good, my favorite Ramsay. One of 2011's best.
This is the story of a mother who really struggles to find love and affection for her son. We see this in obvious moments and more subtle scenes. The most obvious is certainly when she talks to her son and he is still pretty young and says something along the lines that he basically destroyed her life and she'd rather be childless in Paris right now. The fact that her husband hears these words makes it even more awkward for everybody involved. As for the more subtle scenes, I want to mention one that is rather minor, but really stayed in my mind for some reason, namely when they returned home and Kevin has his broken arm and she talks to him and says something along the lines of "what your mother did was really really bad". She does not say I. She talks of herself in the third person. An apology with "I" would have felt far more authentic and personal in my opinion. Also even with all the bad Kevin is doing, we need to keep in mind that Eva (Swinton) is far from a saint herself here. Her words on obese people are as offensive (are they true? for you to decide) as some actions and words directed at her son and other people. You will know what I mean when you see those. However, this should not lead away from the conclusion that the only real antagonist here is Kevin. There is a saying that high intelligence can get in the way of finding true happiness and I think this description also fits him. We see during the ball training as a child and when we hear him say all these numbers that he definitely has a high IQ, even if he is a sociopath and at the very end he says some line that is as brief as it is memorable about being happy. I could probably elaborate on about 20 scenes at least here how we see he is a psychopath from the very beginning. Okay not when he is a baby, even if it was probably no coincidence that he won't stop screaming in the arms of his mother, but acts peacefully when held by his father. But the ball scene I already mentioned is very telling. He knows exactly what to do, but he does not want to make his mother happy. And when he does for a moment, then he only does so that he can disappoint her right afterwards again. The kitchen scene is of course really painful to watch for me as a guinea pig owner myself. But yeah causing harm to animals at a relatively young age is always considered a recurring event for people who commit homicide later on in life. The sister's eye is also really obvious and maybe we don't even want to know exactly what happened there. It's easy to imagine with how he acts towards his sister on other occasions like the hair scene is one good example. But he is really as cold and void of emotions and love as he is to everybody else. Including his dad? Yes including his dad too. At times, it seems as if he has a better connection with him, but really with what happens at the very end, we find out it was all make-believe. He sees him as weak and not worthy of living and probably the moments Kevin acts nicer to him are only mostly so that he will keep training archery with him. Now I just mentioned what happens to the dad and sister at the very end and that was really heartbreaking honestly. One of the moments that will shake you honestly. More because of the girl than the father admittedly, but still. Another scene that had me on the edge of my seat was when Eva arrives at the school knowing a massacre had happened and when she sees the way how the doors are closed, she realizes her son is the culprit. She does not need to see him seconds later, but of course as we see him surrender to police it makes the moment even more intense with the smile on his lips and clearly he enjoys the fact that his mother is there to see what he did. She is always his target in terms of punishing her emotionally, not violently as with everybody else, especially at the ending.
There is of course the scene with the broken arm again that is a prime example. He does not tell anybody what Eva really did and what happened, so he basically has something to use against her whenever he wants. And he does so, even on minor occasions just to push through with his preferences as we see when he scratches on the scar and Eva agrees to go home then and not to do some quick shopping. He just enjoys to torture his mother all the time. There is of course that masturbation scene when every other boy his age would have stopped immediately and would have been really ashamed, but he just keeps going and starts to grin. More scenes that fit the description: Like when she finds out what happened to the guinea-pig and he realizes she just found it and the way he looks at her. Or when he early on really misses the mark with his arrow and then the next shot perfectly would have hit his mother without the glass in-between. This is a film that can be talked about a lot. After the initial reaction is gone, that is. Nobody was moving until after the closing credits rolled in because as good as this film may have been, it is certainly among the most depressing movies you will ever watch. Could he have been stopped? What could have been done differently? We have moments that involve Reilly's character when we see him react in an apologetic way, of course the baby scene early on, but also a very specific moment later on when she actually says that Kevin did it (I think it was about the guinea pig) and his reaction is that maybe she should talk to somebody, so the moment she slightly asks for help, she gets a response that she is just overreacting and she is the one who is unstable. This probably also has to do with Kevin sucking up to his dad, even if admittedly the litchi/eyeball scene really could not have been any more telling. But it also shows the father's helplessness somehow.
As for the technical aspects, I have seen more by Ramsay and felt her style was very easy to identify. The home video looks are not uncommon for her, also that her films frequently look older than they actually are. Or also the use of fast-forward on some occasions. It is not the first time she includes time lapse. I am not sure how she does with chronology in other films, here it is really all over the place if we look at jumps in time and there is hardly any chronology in here. The scenes that take place after the massacre are easy to identify at least because of the red color on the house and on the car. This made it a bit easier, but it sure took me a while to get used to these constant jumps in time. It's alright though. The overall impact is not too negative on the movie. Maybe it is even better the way she did it from the storytelling perspective than if she went fully chronological and me saying this sure means something because in general I almost always prefer chronology. But it also maybe makes the film a better rewatch (I don't even know if you want to rewatch with how depressing it all is) because when you find out at the end about the dead two people at the house, it gives a whole new perspective to Eva's grief, even if she was about to get divorced already. And see things and scenes differently that were depicted before that in the film. I have not read the Lionel Shriver book this is based on, so I cannot say how chronology was handled there or if Ramsay just implemented it here (or the lack thereof) and also not make any other comparisons between book and movie. But certainly the way it turned out here, this is how you should adapt a book that people finally stop with the eternal nonsense criticism à la "The book is always better." What stays the most from this film (except Swinton's turn) are really all the ways in which the boy is depicted as evil. So it came as a bit of a surprise that towards the end, there is always a little bit of hope as we hear his last words that he is no longer sure his motivations were the right ones. And the following hug of course. Maybe a jail term can actually turn somebody into a better human again and not just protect society. At least in this case. Anyway, this glimmer of hope went so strongly against all the calculated viciousness from before that. Also if you take the fact that he commited the brutal crime just very briefly before his 16th anniversary that his prison sentence will not be too long and there is a specific mention of that approach from the mother and also that he took drugs before that in order to create doubts about his sane mind. The irony of saying "sane mind" with all he did sure is priceless. And even if this is a very dark movie, there are one or two occasions of pretty dark comedy too (no arrow collecting, Jehova's Witnesses). All in all, a big thumbs-up for this film. Very good, my favorite Ramsay. One of 2011's best.