One of my very good friends has recently given birth to a baby girl (which I thought impossible as she probably weighs 80 lbs., but there you have it). Of course she was ecstatic; it would be concerning for her not to have been. How, in our modern world where we have every luxury presented to us a silver platter, could we possibly dislike our children when they are something wholly ours and become what we shape them? We Need to Talk About Kevin is a devastating film that refutes any ingrained ideas that its Western audience carry with them about motherhood in a way that is nothing short of mesmerizing and distressing. Whether for good or bad, this is a film that disrupts a monotonous way of thinking and very graphically presents questions of love and similitude.
Tilda Swinton gives her best performance that I have seen as Eva. I fail for descriptors to associate Eva with, because she is hardly seen outside of the context of her and her son, and when she is she is an entirely different person. Perhaps it would be best to describe her relationships then. Eva and Franklin (John C. Reilly) have a son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). From a very early age--birth--Eva and Kevin had issues with one another. To her exasperation Kevin constantly screamed when around her, but never with anyone else. There is a disturbing scene (one of many) where Eva stops in the middle of an intersection while pushing her stroller to relish in the sounds of a jackhammer as it temporarily stifles Kevin's incessant wailing.
As Kevin ages, Eva finds herself constantly agitated and angry around the silent and angry toddler. Kevin begins to act out from an early age. Eva takes him to the doctor to see if perhaps he is autistic. The doctor says he is fine. It seems that no matter how her patience is tried, to everyone else the small war being waged is all in her head. Teenage Kevin is the very face of sociopath. The casting director has done an excellent job of finding good actors to play the three ages of Kevin while maintaining the androgynous beauty of Miller which is also distinct to Swinton. By this point the war is constantly simmering, but neither even really acknowledge it. They have grown accustomed to the fact that they hate one another, and that no amount of effort will change the fact.
The two simply try to find a coexistence, but a person like Kevin is not one to let sleeping dogs lie. His room is pristine with an almost Feng Shui type feel. There is nothing left in it to signify personality except a copy of Robin Hood and discs containing computer viruses. This is a person with no regards to life or the happiness of others. The filmmaker even went as far as to pay homage to the rabbit scene of Fatal Attraction. His final act of aggression is something that we might consider unthinkable if it hadn't happened in one form or another in real life, but I will leave you to find out what. Don't spoil it for yourself.
This makes up about two-thirds of the film. When we are introduced to Eva she is alone, living a small house covered in red paint, nervous, quiet, mixing pills and wine. She goes about life day to day hiding her face when she sees someone she knows, and suffering small attacks from people in her town. What has she done to deserve cruelty almost universally from all who know her? Nothing, really, except being the mother of Kevin.
I hesitate to talk further of plot. When I left the theatre a friend asked what I thought of the film. All I could answer with was "I'm really on edge." This film was two hours of horror as we watch all conventions of the world we live in crumble in the watery black eyes of these two individuals. From the outside they look relatively normal, but there is nothing in their relationship that contains any semblance of love. Every scene was one act of retaliation followed by another, spear-headed by a boy far smarter and much angrier than those around him. By the end every little action he made had the audience cringing, and with the credits there was not even the faintest glimmer of happiness or hope to be found.
This film almost relished in the discomfort of its audience and in the dismal picture that it painted. I have thought about this film much today trying to tease out the moral of the story, but to no avail. From my point of view there are two possibilities, both stemming from the scenes of Eva's pregnancy which I think much of the audience might have forgotten about when looking at the second half of the movie: this may be a feminist film. The first shot of the film was Eva before her marriage at La Tomatina. She is paraded around in the Christ pose, in sexual ecstasy, covered in tomatoes. This was a woman with a life to live. Her pregnancy was a burden to her as she was to become confined to the shackles of responsibility. In this way Kevin might be looked at as the result of this resentment, fed through the umbilical cord.
The second message might be just the opposite. It did not appear that she tried very hard as a new mother to love and nourishes him the way that she ought to have. There seemed a general disinterest to behave the way all of the other mothers in the Mommy and Me classes acted, so perhaps what Kevin did really was her fault after all. The message may be that every child deserves your lifelong love and affection. Kevin was just...going through a phase. But I don't really believe that this is the case. I think sometimes wires are simply crossed.
I need to think on this film some more. It has really left me at a loss. For now I will give it the medium grade.
2/4
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