“There
are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe
what isn't true; the other is to refuse to
believe what is true." - Soren Kierkegaard
According to journalist Chris Hedges, “Those who
cannot love are spiritually and emotionally
dead. They affirm themselves through
destruction, first of others, and then, finally,
of themselves. Those incapable of love never
live.” This emotional deadness and inability to
empathize with others is reflected in
fifteen-year-old Kevin (Ezra Miller) in Lynne
Ramsay's first film in nine years, We Need to
Talk about Kevin, the chilling story of a
sociopathic teenager who commits a horrendous
crime (not explicitly shown), one for which his
mother must endure the anger and resentment of
the community.
Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver and
co-written by Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear,
We Need to Talk about Kevin builds a fractured
narrative told from the point of view of Kevin's
mother Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a
former big-city dweller who loved to travel and
write books until she became a mother. Unfolding
as if in a fevered dream and told in a stream of
flashbacks and flash forwards, a now depressed
and solitary Eva looks back at key emotional
tripping points along her son's destructive
journey.
At the outset, we are immersed in red, a
frequent motif throughout the film. Here, we see
a young Eva and other revelers bathed in a sea
of tomatoes at a festival in Spain, which, in
its orgy-like quality, is a hint of what is to
come later. The scene then moves forward in time
to a city intersection where the sound of a
worker's drill creates a dissonant symphony with
the unstoppable cries of Eva's infant son Kevin.
Eva and her little boy (Rocky Duer, Jasper
Newell) live in a well-to-do suburban house with
husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) and little
sister (Ashley Gerasimovich. These surroundings
stand in sharp contrast to the box-like home in
a run-down neighborhood where Eva is shown years
later, a house spray-painted in red by outraged
neighbors.
By the age of six, young Kevin has already
become a master manipulator, refusing to speak
and still wearing diapers. His deviously
destructive behavior is directed towards his
mother and he is skillful in knowing how to use
it for maximum psychological effect. Though Eva
takes him to a doctor, he simply reassures her
that there is nothing physically wrong with
Kevin, only that he may need more time to
mature. No reason is provided for Kevin's
behavior, but it is clear that Eva resents being
a mother and this is made real by her apathetic
self-pity. She tells him, “Before you were born,
Mommy used to be happy!” Now Mommy wakes up
every day and wishes she were in France!” Her
frustration erupts when she throws Kevin against
the wall, breaking his arm for his refusal to be
toilet trained, not the best way to make an
emotional connection.
She receives little support from her husband who
refuses to believe that his son has severe
emotional problems, but instead questions his
wife's sanity. Instead of confronting the
issues, Franklin ignores them, giving Kevin a
toy bow-and-arrow set and later a high-powered
bow, without any consideration of how they might
be used. The father's lack of understanding
prevents Kevin from being disciplined in the way
that he should and there is no discussion of
counseling with teachers or support groups, or
professional therapy when it is obviously badly
needed. Though the film's title is We Need to
Talk about Kevin, apparently nobody thinks that
that might be a good idea.
After the violence is committed, Eva has to cope
with the contempt of her neighbors. She gets a
job with a travel agency but is verbally berated
by a co-worker (Alex Manette) at a company
Christmas party. In an episode bordering on the
surreal, Eva drives through a menacing crowd of
Halloween trick or treaters to the background of
Buddy Holly singing “Every Day.” Mundane events
such as walking down the street or shopping at a
supermarket become fraught with danger. When two
religious missionaries come to her door, she
uses the opportunity to turn on herself, telling
them that there is no point in talking because
"I'm going straight to hell. Eternal damnation,
the whole thing."
While We Need to Talk about Kevin is an engaging
and often gripping film that offers outstanding
performances by Swinton and Miller, it is torn
between being an exploitative horror film and a
psychological family drama and ends up not being
very successful at either. Marred by its
inability to decide whether to blame ineffective
parenting for Kevin's behavior or to blame the
fact that he was just born “evil,” the film
takes no stand at all, apparently throwing up
its hands and saying, sometimes “bad” things
happen for no reason, a dubious premise.
While some may see the film as wisely left open
to interpretation, the fact is that there is
little to go on in drawing any conclusion.
Ramsay never really probes either side of the
question, surfboarding over the waves and not
dealing authentically with character motivation
or development. Though, to its credit, the film
displays an unanticipated forgiveness towards
Eva by a school victim confined to a wheelchair,
in its totality, We Need to Talk about Kevin is
more of a display of rage, hatred, and
victimization than an attempt to provide new
insight or have us see the characters as flawed
human beings rather than as spawns of Satan.
