We Need to Talk About Kevin

I missed We Need to Talk About Kevin when it was released with a fair amount of hype here in the UK. I also never read the acclaimed book. So really my only contact with this story until now was all the outcry that the film was snubbed at the Oscars and the answer to 'what else has that guy been in?' when going to see The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And, well - yes, the Oscar snub was egregious, yes, this film made Ezra Miller one to watch, though the kid who plays the younger version of him did much of the work for him. And yes, if you're a person looking to be put off having children, this is probably a good place to start. 

This is the story of a successful travel writer whose world crumbles when she has a son she cannot connect with, who displays a lot of the signs of being a sociopath and who ultimately does what all broken teens in stories of American suburbia do. This is a hard film to watch, as a hard woman crumbles thanks to her demon spawn, who only gets worse and worse as he gets older, and the other unfortunate victims who happen to be around him. The clever way that the boy makes his father think he is relatively normal is perhaps the most chillingly effective part.

If I've heard criticism of this film - other than that it's tough to watch - it's that the denouement is a step too far, that it would have been more effective if there had just been an ending that didn't involve such high drama, that the chilling broken relationship would have been far more chilling remaining as it was without end rather than having a big incident take it to an extreme. But I also realise that there's a sense of a book needing a hook, a film needing a hook, an easy sell that was fulfilled here.

The film, perhaps similarly, swings between subtlety and obviousness. The film doesn't have to let you know what's been stuffed down the plughole, but it also has Kevin munching lychees after his sister loses an eye, and the endless repetition of the image of red splattering, which isn't exactly the ultimate in subtlety. 

This is certainly the kind of story that allows actors to really shine, and directors to play tricks - there's a nice sequence at the start where cuts are misleading, and of course the film enjoys telling its story in flashbacks...though of course there are really no surprises from the very early scenes and everyone knows where, inevitably, the story is going. 

It's a tough film to watch. If it is lacking anything, I'd say that it is more of Kevin's life outside his family. I know that the film is from Eva's point of view - the original book being delivered in letters - but I was very curious about how he interacted with his peers up until the gym scene, how he managed to survive being as he is in the notoriously brutal American schooling system, if there was more to him than being a sociopath who has significant contempt for his mother. The film is meant to feel insular and claustrophobic, of course, but I feel that's taken a little too far. 

But it still hits very hard indeed and is centred on a superb performance from Tilda Swinton - so assured compared with how I just saw here in Jarman's The War Requiem - so the film is a confident, if horrifying, success. just don't expect it to offer solutions, give an in-depth analysis of the problem of mothers not bonding with children or attempt to fix rather than glorify the scariest members of society.