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| WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011)
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SBD Star Rating:
by Chiara Adorno
View Credits | See Other Reviews
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We Need to Talk About Kevin draws praise from the critics due to the efforts of actor Tilda Swinton, who plays Eva, as well as the fine directing by Lynne Ramsay and cinematography by Seamus McGarvey. The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name, exploring nature vs. nurture while carrying it to a whole new level. The film is the story of the mother of a boy who goes on a killing spree at school, and the focus is her reflections on her son's earlier life which shows traces of a budding sociopath. In present day, Eva's nights are a haze of drug and alcohol induced loneliness. She rouses herself by morning, barely getting by as a clerk in a small travel agency, and experiencing hatred from all directions. As Jake Coyle Boston Globe explains, "Guilt doesn't just weigh heavily, it obliterates." Her guilt comes from her early mothering of Kevin which seems to have gone off the rails at the start. "Eva's attempts at motherly care -- cold though she is -- are eventually beaten down and she breaks, at one point seething: "Every morning mommy wakes up and wishes she was in France." In another moment of weakness, she turns violent..... The script by Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear, adapting Lionel Shriver's acclaimed novel, artfully blends these two timelines evoking Eva's interior consciousness, where every moment recalls a precursor to the tragedy, [the school massacre] a debate of her role in it." Dana Stevens Slate admires how the three boys who play Kevin, "show a remarkable continuity, not just in their physical appearance but in their furious, dead-eyed gaze; Ezra Miller, in particular, bravely pushes his characterization well past the point of loathsomeness. There’s something off-putting and reptilian about this child from toddlerhood on, a quality Ramsay emphasizes...." Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times informs us that, "What holds us in the film, besides Ramsay's skill, is Swinton's fearless, ferocious performance as someone not only trying to come to terms with an endless nightmare but also agonizing over what part she might have had in its creation." |
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