We Need to Talk About Kevin

We-Need-To-Talk-About-Kevin-Poster-Lynne-Ramsay-John-C-Reilly-Tilda-Swinton-2011-October-Ezra-Miller
Guest blog by Jo Borg

Alone at home, Eva Katchadourian holds her screaming baby, Kevin, at arms length and fixes a forced smile; so begins her fraught journey into a resentful motherhood.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, adapted by British director Lynne Ramsay from Lionel Shriver’s Orange Prize-winning novel, boasts a score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, cinematography by Seamus McGarvey (The Hours, Atonement) and a cast headed by Tilda Swinton.

Told from the viewpoint of Eva as she confronts the aftermath of a high-school massacre, the story examines through flashbacks her feelings of responsibility for her son’s sociopathic behaviour and the subsequent impact on their family.

Tilda Swinton is mesmerising as a guilt-ridden, haunted Eva, unable to warm to her child, who finds herself stood with a pram next to drilling workmen in order to find respite from Kevin’s ceaseless crying.

Kevin himself matures from toddler to teenager with spot-on casting. Rock Duer’s challenging and chilling childhood Kevin easily matches Ezra Miller’s performance as the provocative and menacing teenage Kevin.

It’s a very technically beautiful film. The soundtrack contrasts idealistic sentiments of golden oldies like Buddy Holly, Lonnie Donegan against intense visuals. Characters and timelines shift fluidly, their threads seamlessly woven together by clever sound design: a heart beating in one scene becomes rain pounding on a car roof and a thunderstorm in the next.

The film is laden with metaphors for Eva’s isolation. The scene in which a heavily pregnant Eva walks down a corridor surrounded by pirouetting young girls in tutus cuts to her walking down a corridor in prison. The opening shot of a jostling crowd at what is presumably La Tomatina festival introduces the blood red motif that runs throughout the film’s otherwise muted palette and echoes Lady Macbeth’s ‘damned spot’ which Eva is unable to wash away.

What’s is missing is the depth that provoked so much discussion of the book in the first place. The nature versus nurture debate is never fully explored. Kevin is presented as a one-dimensional character offering nothing for Eva’s guilt to play off. Much less is made of Eva’s history with only a nod to her past as a successful travel writer making her a much more of a victim than Shriver may have intended. Husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) is an under-developed character greatly reducing the impact of the final reveal.

Fans of Shriver’s novel may find the film less satisfying however taken as an inspired companion to the book rather than an exact retelling the film is definitely worth seeing for its beautiful cinematography and Swinton’s outstanding performance.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is out October 21st. Catch it at the Hyde Park Picture House
Rated 15, 112mins

Check out fellow Culture Vulture blogger and Editor of brilliant Leeds based TQS website Jamie McHale’s review