She's like a fish out of water. The novel by Lionel Shriver relates the story through a series of letters Eva writes to her husband Franklin. I'd be happy to see what they come up with, but, they have more of the understanding of the wildness of the world that they're building. 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. It discloses its narrative fitfully, in snatches and gobbets that make sense only gradually, like the . The film primarily shows you the pathos of evil by painting a portrait of a deeply and violently disturbed young man from his mother's point of view, and you watch how this relationship built and how that pathos developed. Ironically he becomes a miniature doppelganger of her, all sharp angles and androgynous countenance lying in direct contrast to the lovably rounded and craggy features of his father. But Eva is incapable of showing him the love that he deserves, even after trying her best. This review of the film was originally published on December 22, 2011. 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. With Franklin there is no conflict. Eva repeatedly tries and fails to create a bond with her son according to traditional societal expectations. Kevin's insidious nature is best exemplified in a scene staged in the aftermath of Celia losing her eye. Jokes are fine, but don't post tactless/inappropriate ones. For full Oscars coverage and commentary by its reviewer, Fr. This comes to a head when Kevin has learned that pooping his pants is the quickest way to his mother's heart, and the time she shows him the most attention - but that attention is always disgust. Kevin is a story of hope for a new millennium, an Its a Wonderful Life in the age of school shootings and planes crashing into buildings a world-weary world that has been bombarded by nihilistic themes in their narratives for the better part of a century. Kevin chooses to conceal the incident from Franklin. Fr. 2003-2023 Best Little Sites, LLC. 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. Indeed, Kevin is a relentless film that gives its audience few opportunities to come up for air from the depths of anguish to which it plummets. But her expression is one of strained indifference. There is no pattern. The light outside disappears. The condition causes loss of the ability to understand or express speech. The kid was screaming nonstop from the go, as infant. Still, the film should not be overshadowed by its leads performance, as is often the case with female Oscar nominees. 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. Therefore, when Kevin shows Eva the scar from the childhood accident, he tells her that it is the most honest thing that Eva ever did to him. This is also true of Eva, but we see the conflict in her about her son's mental state. The colour red is a recurring motif in the film. 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. Rated the #74 best film of 2011, and #5264 in the greatest all-time movies (according to RYM users). Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. Franklin himself lives in a state of demented decency, deceiving himself that his family are living acceptable lives. Does their parental neglect make them culpable for the lives he took? We see it in the wall of canned tomatoes that play backdrop to Evas anxiety attack in a supermarket, and the Cabernets she drowns her sorrows with. Is it possible for her to move on from something so traumatic? Finally. ROHAN: Since Jentorra and most of her freedom fighters make it out alive, have you heard anything about coming back for more Quantum Realm adventures down the line? It is a world where any attempts to offer a message of mercy, conversion and redemption must be done deftly and authentically, because at the end of the day, sometimes the community won't rally around you and more often than not Mr. Potter carries the day. ROHAN: You have a few scenes with Kathryn Newton, who is playing Cassie, in the film. The same 7-year-old also says, "I don't give a rat's ass." Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking Mild 35 of 50 found this mild Adults are sometimes shown casually drinking wine. She has something of an answer as to why Kevin committed such terrors, but where does that leave her? She finally gets her excuse to abandon Kevin but doesn't act on it. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" leans into that debate, showcasing a resentful mother, a passive father, and a child with an untreated mental illness. Eva always wanted a daughter, and as her attention moves from Kevin, he becomes more and more begrudging towards his sister. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. What makes this all worthwhile is the fact that Tilda Swinton is simply an astonishing actress who can bring off anything. He is pursuing a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at Heythrop College in London. The film does not show us how Kevin presents the eyeball to Eva in jail. Not here. edition that "We Need to Talk About Kevin" asks an explicit question, "Yet I hope that this question is no more resolved in the book than crude oppositions like 'nature vs. nurture' are ever reconciled in real life.". Like Lady Macbeth, she tries to scrub the guilt off her hands. Eva can only play at being mommy, and so when Kevin refuses her attempts to breastfeed and is only appeased by the presence of his affable father, played by John C. Reilly, her whole world crashes down around her and her value as a person comes into question. When his father is around, Kevin behaves like a charming and enthusiastic kid. Although the act is enhanced through visual obscurity and concealment, we get the idea that Kevin kills a few of his classmates in the locked auditorium. Kevin and Eva look similar, and in many scenes, Kevin and Eva wear similar clothes. 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. Shriver welcomes the sharply divided interpretations, writing in the Harper Perennial P.S. Kevin's bedroom is actually the biggest red flag in the film, and the fact that neither Eva nor Franklin noticed that Kevin's bedroom clearly displays the signs of mental illness until he was fifteen years old proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Franklin had never looked in his bedroom, wasn't interested in his interests or hobbies, and didn't want to know what he did in his spare time. Yet it is in those infrequent instances of relief, conversion and mercy that the film finds its identity and direction. Alec Baldwin has been charged in the southwest state of New Mexico for manslaughter and faces an 18-month prison sentence, as does the film's armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly dangerous things he says and does as he grows up. In an ordinary movie, there would be scenes in classrooms, meetings with counselors, heart-to-heart discussions between the parents. Eva's point of view is obviously not reliable, and her segments are intended to portray that she's entered a cycle of deep self-abuse over having raised a psychopath. While Eva is shown throughout the film to be indifferent toward her son, Kevin's actions are fueled by his desire to spite her. KATY: Oh, I'd love to come back. Going on, she again asks the question of responsibility and says, "I don't know. You've got Braveheart, which it kind of has a similar feeling to. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. So, that part I kind of liked because it shows, okay, this is what someone who's still fighting, interacting with someone who kind of essentially gave in. How difficult was it to play the straight woman when everyone around you gets to be fairly silly in the early scenes? She is less interested in the nature vs nurture debate, more in the crippling weight of societal expectations of motherhood. Best Little Sites is not liable for inaccuracies, errors, or omissions found herein. There have been a lot of discussions nature vs. nurture, but I've been thinking she was not ok during pregnancy, usually postpartum depression starts after birth. ", Did Kevin internalize her hatred of him, or is she just feeding into his innate instability? While Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniadidn't bring back several mainstays of the wider Ant-Man family, the film did introduce a number of new allies, namely Jentorra and her Freedom Fighters. The real monster is expecting nothing less than unconditional love. None of this is done in a straightforward fashion. Kevin overhears his parents talking about a divorce, which adds to his anger towards the world. He completely denies the reality of Kevin's personality and identity, and thus any agency over their relationship. Instead, maternal ambivalence is coded as horror. However it wasn't in the film I watched today and I can't find the scene anywhere..did I just imagine this scene?! March 1, 2023, 6:00 a.m. 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? However, just the neglect of his mother would not amount to the cathartic finale. It'd be so much fun. And I really am curious as to how she's handling a society of ultra-intelligent ants that basically flooded her world. Though unlike the Shakespearean character, the question of Evas guilt has a lot less cut-and-dried answer. Apparently even before he began to talk, Kevin made a vow to punish Eva for her feelings. Maternal ambivalence turns into filial antagonism, colouring her perception of him as inherently evil. As she leaves, a troupe of tiny ballerinas in tutus run past her. Neither parent punishes him or seeks outside help, leaving him to his own devices. When the child Kevin is sick and nuzzles close to his mother as she reads, his father comes to the door and is rejected in favor of his mother, the look on Evas face is one of wonder and delight. None of that takes anything away from yet another deeply felt performance by the always-interesting Swinton. 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. 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? Not that she has a ton of options she struggles to find work and be accepted by those around her. To express concern over a child's habitual malice is coded as monstrous. Lionel Shriver's source novel is a quirky, disturbing take on the high school killer story. Eva takes incessant trips down memory lane to cope with her past loss. Terms Of Service | Eva gets pregnant for a second time and gives birth to a little daughter Celia. 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. I felt like I kind of joked with Jeff Loveness on this, but I was like, Did you just watch 300 and write my character? Because it was a lot of like those single line, Get to the tower!, and just kind of like silly one liners and things that felt reminiscent of a lot of those just straight up warrior movies. 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. We also did a lot of blue screen work before, which really helps with the imagination. Kevin knows that Celia is his mothers favorite offspring, and he goes to great lengths to make his mother feel uncomfortable. I mean, there's no room for the leader of the rebellion to give up. Kevin's killings, meanwhile, are the absent, invisible center of Ramsay's film. He's aware of her feelings toward him, and throughout the film, points them out. How would I behave if basically the weight of a literal realm was on my shoulders? Like Jentorra kind of was the reason that her society collapsed in a way, in the comic books. His eyes dont give away any sense of remorse or guilt. 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. Kevin keeps the secret of how this happens and a strange complicity develops between the mother and son. Something just happened. So, I'm personally glad that they distanced that part of the thing from this character, but there was so little overlap that - There's only seven comic books, I think, that have Jentorra in them - that we really did seem to have a lot more freedom to kind of create a fully new character for this. So I am thinking, was he born evil from the very beginning and she knew it and treated him alike evil from the very beginning? The film moves without any pattern between past, present and who knows when. ROHAN: You're on a cast with Paul Rudd, David Dastmalchian,William Jackson Harper, and so manyfunny people. It's a cyclical pattern, making it impossible to hold just one person accountable for everything. 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. Annie Graham in Hereditary is conflicted by feelings of love and hate, resentment and remorse, towards her son. Rated R Shortly after, Eva goes back to the house. We're supposed to understand Kevin through Eva's flashbacks, which are indeed confusing, but not chronologically, where the difference lies solely in Tilda Swinton's hairstyle. See movies like "The innocents" (1961, Jack Clayton) (pay attention to the title) and "The omen" (1976, Richard Donner). Although these two terms are often used interchangeably in colloquial use, there are some mild differences between these two categories of personality disorders. We gather she didn't want to get pregnant, isn't sure why she's married, is a mother who tries to mask hostility with superficial kindness. He doesn't have the emotional capacity to have a disturbed son, and so has decided that he doesn't and that's the end of it. She could move away for a fresh start, but she's shown setting up a room for him, complete with his navy blue bedding and Robin Hood book. When Eva dips her whole face in a basin of water, her face turns into Kevin's. Rather, Ramsay's film is an extended treatment of the optics of grief and guilt. He completely denies the reality of Kevin's personality and identity, and thus any agency over their relationship. The film depicts him as a psychopath beyond redemption. Plus, she also touches on a potentially big deleted scene that would've seen her cross paths with Krylar (Bill Murray) and teases possible beef with Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer). Kevin is far too malevolent, which might work in a Rosemary's Baby horror context, but not here (admittedly it does verge on horror at times but ultimately we are asked to empathise with Eva's travails as a mother). Moving back and forth in time, the narrative revolves around a picture-perfect American family, but as the story progresses, we see cracks in the familial structure. Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly Besides their physical likeness, Eva and Kevin also share a certain coldness, which plays into Eva's self-hatred. Don't post randomness/off-topic comments. Kevin does things to Eva in this movie that are so cruel that an evil demon seems to be regarding her from his eyes. We Need to Talk About Kevin Jump to Edit Summaries Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly dangerous things he says and does as he grows up. So, I think it'd be really, really cool to see if they came up with something else. Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. At one point, she mockingly. True paternal love would have been expressed as abiding concern for the man his son could grow up to be if there really was a danger of mental illness, and result in the appropriate physical and mental health care to avoid a catastrophe. For instance, post-partum depression similar to hers is very common and probably didn't do as much damage as she ascribes to it. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Kevins clothes are also an avenue to memories for Eva, and in the end, Eva irons and stacks up Kevins clothes in a drawer in the hope that her son will return from prison. He grows into a spiteful toddler, refusing to say "mommy" and egging on her frustrations. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be be Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly dangerous things he says and does as he grows up. We see Kevin as a troubled kid who may need greater care. Scan this QR code to download the app now. When she asks him that honest question, having accepted the reality of her abuse towards him, she comes to him totally honest And he no longer feels that underlying connection between love and fear that motivated him to his actions. The impressionistic nature of the film does not blurt out the whole truth, and the audience has to make their own journey to construct the meaning. A demon seed. Jake Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, comedian and writer. It may not strike one as something extraordinary, but one needs to understand that Kevins mind is wired differently. Kevin, it seems, has a method to his madness. But Ramsay is less interested in the blame game, more in how trauma can put us in a vicious cycle of self-inflicted pain. KATY: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it would be drawn from movies, essentially. His son is who Franklin says he is, and anything else is just invisible. Ramsay simulates these associative memories, jumping back and forth between the past and the present. There are several red flags in the movie that indicates Kevins volatile dispositions, but an accurate diagnosis is not possible. Advertise, Funny Superhero (DC & Marvel) Shirts & Stickers. Being a child somehow means they're inherently innocent. 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. Trademark | Instead, it's a personal story about a family or more specifically, a mother (an excellent Swinton) and her troubled son. Votes are used to help determine the most interesting content on RYM. describes the "nature vs. nurture" debate. His attitude towards his son is warmer, but underneath there's no more depth than there is with Eva. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined. Or to put it differently, Ramsay more or less stays true to the novel's somewhat callow and, at times, hysterical approach to the rich questions of maternal doubt. He was exactly right. Ramsay builds on Shriver's idea of internalised blame with how Eva sees herself following the tragedy. Hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina . 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