Directed by Lynne Ramsay, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is fragments of time, jagged and confusing, lurching around inside her mind. But recent years have shown horror films can write mothers full of contradictions that challenge the status quo. KATY: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it would be drawn from movies, essentially. I could have sworn that during the first time I watched it there was a scene of Kevin, Franklin and Celia in the garden and it shows how Kevin actually murdered them. We Need To Talk About Kevin - Behind the Scenes - Tilda Swinton Movie (2011) HD - YouTube 0:00 / 2:18 We Need To Talk About Kevin - Behind the Scenes - Tilda Swinton Movie. Ramsay simulates these associative memories, jumping back and forth between the past and the present. We cling to guidelines like the length of Tilda Swinton's hair to figure out where we are. And of course from there, we learn he perpetrates a mass killing at a school. Reilly is typically wonderful in a thankless role, while both juvenile actors evince a low-grade rage that never moves into complete disconnection or full-blown psychosis. In any other movie, that would be child abuse. From ths beginning of the movie they lay out the whole story, but it isn't until you watch the full thing that you piece everything together and get this larger than life story. Instead, maternal ambivalence is coded as horror. But by the time he is a seven year-old, he starts to act in ways that seem in excess of whatever defects in mother love he may be getting. He answers, I used to think I knew why, and now Im not so sure. This small act of hesitant humility is followed by Kevins embrace of his mother which can only be likened to the embrace received by that infamous scriptural progeny upon his arrival home. Jake Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, comedian and writer. Also, stripes are a striking feature that connects Kevins clothing sense from childhood to adolescence. Theres a possibility that maybe before all this happened that there was that naivete to Jentorra, but yeah, I don't know that she was re-inspired by Cassies energy, I guess, as much as like, Hey, this is the real world and you need to kind of catch up to where we are.. Starring: Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly. We see it perfectly after he blinds Celia - Eva attempts to confront him about what he's done, and he sits chewing a water chestnut to impress the image of plucking out an eye on Eva, just to watch the horror on her face. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Last March, Bruce Willis family said his aphasia had affected his cognitive abilities. It suffers from an excess of clunky foreshadowing and there's very little I find believable about the characters' actions. Kevin keeps the secret of how this happens and a strange complicity develops between the mother and son. His eyes dont give away any sense of remorse or guilt. Swinton said as much in an interview, Its about her fears and the horror of what she knows about herselfusing him as a kind of projection of her own self-loathing. However, she created a pattern whereby she only expresses herself to Kevin through disgust and fear. As a teenager, Kevin (now played by Ezra Miller) has started to cruelly resemble his mother in profile and hairstyle. Trademark | ROHAN: Jentorra does have a comics counterpart, did you draw on those stories to inform your backstory or did you work with Peyton to create anew backstory for the film? Copyright 2023. While we are not sure whether Kevin consumed the eye itself, we know from the book that Kevin keeps Celias glass eye as a souvenir after assailing her. Kevin, it seems, has a method to his madness. It's why vandals paint Evas house in red, and neighbours take out their anger on her. Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Ultimately what it winds up giving us is perhaps the most important truth of Christianity, namely that God is the hope to be found in the midst of the smoke and ashes. Rated the #74 best film of 2011, and #5264 in the greatest all-time movies (according to RYM users). Only the daughter, Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich), seems halfway normal. While Eva is growing increasingly distrustful of Kevin, Franklin sides with his son and their marriage takes a hit. But the two most significant and poignant moments are found at the end of the film, when the 18-year-old Kevin, two years into a prison sentence for a heinous incident at his high school (yes, its as bad as you think), responds to his mothers query as to why he did what he did. Therefore, the sense of clothing provides a link between the otherwise antagonistic mother and son. Votes are used to help determine the most interesting content on RYM. Besides their physical likeness, Eva and Kevin also share a certain coldness, which plays into Eva's self-hatred. Because Kevin is infallible to Franklin, he's also incapable of needing help, and as a result Franklin seems to have no respect to any sort of danger to his son, even giving a disturbed young man a lethal weapon just for fun on his fifteenth birthday - something that could even be considered an act in direct defiance of the reality of his son's deteriorating mental state, or even a dare. Based on Lionel Shriver's 2003 bestseller of the same name, Lynne Ramsay's 2011 film explores a broken family, mental illness, and the aftermath of a tragedy. Index | The wife and mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), has been so overwhelmed by despair that her life exists in her mind all at the same time. Like a fluke, nothing to do with her personality or her hubby's personality? But Eva is incapable of showing him the love that he deserves, even after trying her best. KATY: Oh, I'd love to come back. Helmed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay based on the Orange Prize-winning eponymous 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is a jarring, erratic, and sometimes profoundly disturbing 2011 psychological thriller that creates an uncanny place in the viewer's mind. The novel explores themes of nihilism, motherhood, the relationship between violence and depravity, and much more. They never talk about Kevin. She makes one feel her strung to the breaking point tension in scene after scene. But he hates her the most due to her pretense and dishonesty, it seems. Also read:Author Lionel Shriver on her early writing, politics, essential reading list and persevering out of 'sheer spite'. None of that takes anything away from yet another deeply felt performance by the always-interesting Swinton. Don't get in arguments with people here, or start long discussions. KATY: I kind of saw Jentorra as someone who was already part of a warrior society, so maybe she was used to fighting already, but in kind of a way different level. There was also a really short interaction that I had with Bill Murray, where we released him from holding, because it kind of looks like he died in the movie now, pretty early on. Indeed, one of. Meanwhile, Kevin is planning something that would shatter Evas world forever. Those trucks have the new UPS logo, where if the time-frame is correct, the trucks would have had the old logo of a stringed parcel above the UPS Shield. The story revolves around a family of four, but the main focus is on the relationship between the mother (Eva, played by Tilda Swinton) and the son (Kevin, played by Rock River, Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller). It doesn't gel with what has come before, where Eva seems to accept her son's innate cruelty, and is looking for a way to escape. An important film that attempts to delve into the psychology behind the high school massacres we seem to read about in the news on a weekly basis. We Need to Talk About Kevin. Kevin has numerous reasons to hate his mother, Eva. Sometimes Zuzu's petals are all you have to hold onto. Kevin, it seems, is a volatile Holden Caulfield for the generation. Did you work with her individually on creating some of that dynamic since Jentorra is someone that's been in this fight a long time versus Cassie who is just beginning her fight against Kang? The cast ensemble, with Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, and Ezra Miller in a menacing role, cannot be praised enough. Sometimes Zuzu's petals are all you have to hold onto. American release: January 27, 2012. Kevin replies that he thought he knew why but now hes not sure anymore. For instance, the ball game Eva plays with a toddler Kevin: when Kevin successfully rolls the ball back to her, her praise is strained and brittle. For mothers always seem to be on trial. See production, box office & company info. An unshakeable experience and a daring experiment in film form, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin challenged conventional wisdom on what makes for a good adaptation. Kevin chooses to conceal the incident from Franklin. One day, Celia loses one of her eyes from toxic cleaning supplies, and Kevin becomes a prime suspect. The movie we see is her collecting every horrible interaction she ever had with her son and putting it under the umbrella of "things I did," because the only way she can cope with the insanity of what her son did is by fitting it to a narrative where she's responsible. He is pursuing a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at Heythrop College in London. After this episode, Eva and Kevin seemingly become more affectionate towards each other. The comedy had to come elsewhere there. Eva goes into postpartum depression, and her menacing and antisocial kid Kevin only aggravates her ailment. I think that she and Jentorra had a huge past together. The shelves and tabletops are as barren as those in a display home. There are several red flags in the movie that indicates Kevins volatile dispositions, but an accurate diagnosis is not possible. Psychology Today describes the "nature vs. nurture" debate as questioning how both elements impact a person's characteristics. We Need to Talk About Kevin is already playing in NYC; it opens today in LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix and is rolling out nationwide. Jake Martin, visit our special Oscars season blog, Movie Minister.. For more information, please see our For much of the film, she lives with her husband, son and daughter in an expensive suburban home, and when we realize they've lived there for several years, we begin to wonder, how can four people occupy a home for over a decade and not accumulate anything? Privacy | If you look one level deeper it's clear that Kevin was deeply and horribly emotionally abused by both of his parents, and in a genuinely loving family he would not have turned out the way he did. In an ordinary movie, there would be scenes in classrooms, meetings with counselors, heart-to-heart discussions between the parents. With Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell. Kevin appears in a short sleeve red shirt as a toddler. This review of the film was originally published on December 22, 2011. We see this throughout Kevin's early developmental journey. The film does not show us how Kevin presents the eyeball to Eva in jail. Shortly after the incident with Celia, Kevin and his parents have a confrontation at the dining table. You tell me." Twice in flashbacks to Kevin's parents in their dating days, a UPS terminal with trucks can be seen in the near background. That's the underlying message of We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lynne Ramsey's remarkable allegory on the transcendent nature of relationships. Near the top of the list of the worst movies to watch on Mother's Day is "We Need to Talk About Kevin." He hates Eva for a plethora of reasons her neglect, her coldness towards Kevin, and Franklins misguided overcompensation for the lack of Evas love. Did they create a monster, or was he born that way? Little Kevin cries relentlessly, and Eva often uses cruel methods to shut him up. She obviously feels complicit and takes on the role of communal scapegoat as a way to expiate her own guilt as well as to grieve the loss of her family. For Kevin, maternal love and attention have become completely conflated with disgust and fear. Kevin has a real emotional attachment to his bow because the only time his mother showed him genuine affection was when he had the flu, and she read Robin Hood to him. She lives with the guilt of what her son did, on top of the guilt of knowing she did nothing about the various warning signs. See movies like "The innocents" (1961, Jack Clayton) (pay attention to the title) and "The omen" (1976, Richard Donner). Eva and Franklin are a happily married couple till Eva gives birth to Kevin. His son is who Franklin says he is, and anything else is just invisible. Still, the film should not be overshadowed by its leads performance, as is often the case with female Oscar nominees. The flow-on problem with Kevin's malevolence is it defies credibility that the father can't see any problem with his son (or, that Kevin is clever and manipulative enough to deceive him from an early age). Starring: Tilda Swinton,John C. Reilly,Ezra Miller Watch all you want. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Don't post randomness/off-topic comments. He grows into a spiteful toddler, refusing to say "mommy" and egging on her frustrations. Any spoilers should be placed in spoiler tags as such. Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly dangerous things he says and does as he grows up. It'd be so much fun. Copyright | for disturbing violence and behavior, some sexuality and language, Berlinale 2023 Highlights, Part Two: Reality, Manodrome, The Adults, Inside, Golda, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson Feted at SBIFF 2023, Revisiting Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Tragically Common: Jamie Dack, Lily McInerny and Jonathan Tucker on Palm Trees and Power Lines. Eva gets pregnant for a second time and gives birth to a little daughter Celia. otakucode 11 yr. ago The sound of him savouring the juicy fruit a fruit he doesn't even like in deliberate crunches of sinister delight becomes unsettling when paired with the thought of Celia's lost eye. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva is literally on trial for parental negligence. Eva is entirely bound by the expectations of a culture that fetishizes the mommy and insists upon a particular quality and dynamic in order for relationships to be healthy and normative. Going on, she again asks the question of responsibility and says, "I don't know. All of the performances are secondary to an urgently compelling narrative that is both agonizing to witness and impossible to look away from. and our Motherhood was therefore intended as a punishment.. it's difficult to accept why Eva keeps visiting her son in jail, at one point even asking why he did it. 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