We Need to Talk About Kevin
Chronicling the ominously tense relationship between a mother and son, which builds inexorably from subtle mind games to homicidal violence, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s third feature is a riveting adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s emotionally wrenching hit novel. Tilda Swinton gives an intense, award-winning performance as long-suffering mother Eva, while Ezra Miller radiates diabolical charisma as the teen version of her sociopathic son, Kevin. Ramsay’s deft use of flashbacks and nonlinear structure preserves Shriver’s devastating final twist, but this timely thriller is less a suspense-driven exercise than a slow-burn psychological horror movie that taps into every parent’s worst nightmare.
Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
- Notes From Sebastián LelioI discovered Lynne Ramsay’s cinema with RATCATCHER (1999) and have always found it tremendously powerful. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is a gem of expressive precision and masterful cinematic gestures (and their combination), featuring one of my favorite performances by Tilda Swinton. The genre is difficult to pin down—it could be horror, it could be family drama—but strikes me as tremendously attractive and consistent with its theme of study: that evil is sometimes not out there in the world but inside our home. I also find its nonlinear structure very powerful. The viewer has to make sense of the penetrating, sharp, cruel, Cubist narration. Much of the beauty of the film comes from its structure as well as the icy distance from what is observed, which grants the viewer’s experience a quota of strangeness that is very difficult to achieve and which Ramsay accomplishes utterly convincingly. We cannot take our eyes off the stations of the cross (via crucis) that Swinton’s character undergoes, and we can almost hear the protagonist’s thoughts amid the silence. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is like a castle of glass playing cards in which each piece is in perfect tension with the others, where no card is superfluous but all combine, masterfully resonating with each other, taking our breath away and chilling our hearts in one fell swoop.