Lionel Shriver’s book "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2003) floored me. Those who have read the book understand that I cannot go into too much detail in a discussion of either book or film (yet), but I can testify to how successfully Shriver used her protagonist, distraught mother Eva, to elaborate on terrible events through a series of letters. I am not a fan of book-film comparisons, as each medium should be judged according to its own merit. So I’ll say this: the book accomplishes more as a book than the film does as a film.
When we are introduced to Eva (Tilda Swinton, haunted and vulnerable, deserving of an Oscar nomination she didn't get) she is living alone in a run-down house in a working class neighbourhood. Through a series of flashbacks, we come to understand that her family had been massively traumatised. This trauma, a shocking violence which extends to the lives of many other individuals, is deeply personal to Eva. The film shows us Eva in happier times, like those she had with her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly), and shows the origins of her eventual despair: the birth of their son Kevin (played as a teenager by Ezra Miller). From the start, there’s something off about Kevin. Even as a toddler, he looks at his mother from under his brow like a crocodile measuring its prey from just below the water surface. Franklin grows increasingly annoyed at Eva’s suggestions that Kevin is unstable, even when something bad befalls their young daughter Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich).
We Need to Talk About Kevin is directed by Lynne Ramsey, who uses a variety of shot types and filters to suggest emotion and turmoil, and who uses red to extensive effect to signify death, blood and the pressure of time. In addition, the film is a faithful adaptation of the thematic and narrative essence of the book: to what an extent is Kevin born evil, if ‘evil’ is the most appropriate word, and to what an extent is Eva’s attitude towards her eldest partly responsible for the person he becomes? But to focus only on these issues would detract from the film’s representation of grief and guilt. This is a thematically accomplished film, one with some superbly filmed and highly unsettling scenes that make for a clinical drama about parents, children and the inescapability of the shaping forces that exist between them.
Judging by the complete audience silence when the film was over – not a gasp, not a cough – those who come to the film unprepared by its backstory should find themselves considerably shaken. Note that while the film is upsetting and has an age restriction of 16VLS, there is almost no sex (just a brief silhouetted scene), only some swearing (far less than what you hear on an HBO show) and the violence occurs mostly, almost exclusively, off-screen. The age restriction oversells the content and invites misguided expectations.
The rest of the review goes into massive spoiler territory, so please don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film. Again, massive spoiler warning (for the film and the book).
When we are introduced to Eva (Tilda Swinton, haunted and vulnerable, deserving of an Oscar nomination she didn't get) she is living alone in a run-down house in a working class neighbourhood. Through a series of flashbacks, we come to understand that her family had been massively traumatised. This trauma, a shocking violence which extends to the lives of many other individuals, is deeply personal to Eva. The film shows us Eva in happier times, like those she had with her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly), and shows the origins of her eventual despair: the birth of their son Kevin (played as a teenager by Ezra Miller). From the start, there’s something off about Kevin. Even as a toddler, he looks at his mother from under his brow like a crocodile measuring its prey from just below the water surface. Franklin grows increasingly annoyed at Eva’s suggestions that Kevin is unstable, even when something bad befalls their young daughter Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich).
We Need to Talk About Kevin is directed by Lynne Ramsey, who uses a variety of shot types and filters to suggest emotion and turmoil, and who uses red to extensive effect to signify death, blood and the pressure of time. In addition, the film is a faithful adaptation of the thematic and narrative essence of the book: to what an extent is Kevin born evil, if ‘evil’ is the most appropriate word, and to what an extent is Eva’s attitude towards her eldest partly responsible for the person he becomes? But to focus only on these issues would detract from the film’s representation of grief and guilt. This is a thematically accomplished film, one with some superbly filmed and highly unsettling scenes that make for a clinical drama about parents, children and the inescapability of the shaping forces that exist between them.
Judging by the complete audience silence when the film was over – not a gasp, not a cough – those who come to the film unprepared by its backstory should find themselves considerably shaken. Note that while the film is upsetting and has an age restriction of 16VLS, there is almost no sex (just a brief silhouetted scene), only some swearing (far less than what you hear on an HBO show) and the violence occurs mostly, almost exclusively, off-screen. The age restriction oversells the content and invites misguided expectations.
The rest of the review goes into massive spoiler territory, so please don’t read on if you haven’t seen the film. Again, massive spoiler warning (for the film and the book).
3
2
1
The book is presented as a series of letters from Eva to Franklin. Clearly they had separated, and he retained custody of Celia. The letters make reference to the high school slaughter that Kevin and his bow were responsible for. Only at the end does Eva, having worked through her guilt, anger and lack of understanding, present a detailed, researched overview of what Kevin did to his classmates. It’s a powerful finale to the book, and while I understand that much of cinema’s success lies in its powers of suggestion, the film lacks a final punch by not showing anything that happens inside the school gym. The book ends with a final major blow: the revelation that Franklin and Celia were, in fact, Kevin’s first murder victims. The film drops the first person narration, and it should be pretty clear to most viewers that Franklin and Celia’s fate is sealed in blood. There is no element of surprise in the film.
While the film refrains from showing the final bloodshed, it does go into stylistic overkill at times. Late in the film, the clearly psychopathic Kevin cannot just eat a litchi. He has to peel it in close up, then insert it into his mouth in extreme close-up, then chew it so the juices run over his chin, etc. It makes sense in the aftermath of what he’d done to Celia, but I could’ve done without the visual spoonfeeding. Shorter scenes, as when Eva walks in on Kevin while he’s masturbating and he doesn’t bat an eye at her seeing him (on the contrary, actually), are more powerful because they lack the excesses that weigh down other scenes.
Much of the film plays out as a highlight reel of Kevin-being-evil moments, which actually undermines his threatening presence. If a character is evil all the time and you don’t get to see much of a functioning family that he’s threatening to destroy, some tension is lost. I’ve seen comparisons between this film and Rosemary’s Baby, but really, this contemporary take on evil cannot be positioned alongside Polanski’s urban horror. We Need to Talk About Kevin is very good indeed, but it is far from great.
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