I saw the film We need to talk about Kevin. I have read the book and I think I would have had some trouble following the story if I hadn't. The narrative is choppy, cutting to and from a radiant past, a troubled past, a terrible incident in the past and a miserable present for the main character, Eva (Tilda Swinton).
Tilda Swinton is terrific - fine-drawn, wound taut as a violin string - playing a woman living in recognisable hells - the hell of a mother whose baby won't stop crying, whose child is a destructive brat, refusing to be toilet trained and whose teenage son has all the nihilism of adolescence to the nth degree. Then the hell of being a pariah among her neighbours so her house is vandalised and she's attacked in the street (though I did wonder why she hadn't moved somewhere a thousand miles away from the place where she was known). And a further hell of remembering a different existence as a Lonely Planet type of traveller, a successful publisher and of being in love with her cuddly bear of a husband. The final hell - the event which brought about her life as an outcast - is shown to the audience in flashes.
Tilda Swinton was given black narrow eyes, matching those in the dark, handsome face of her son Kevin (uncanny representation from the actors that played him as a child (Jasper Newell) and an adolescent (Ezra Miller). Visually the film was great - the blowing curtains, the scuffed floorboards in the Bohemian apartment, and the smooth surfaces of the suburan palace where the family lived as practically no family has lived in the history of our species. Once a family as rich as this would have had servants around, and their leisure would have been in a much more peopled space but they were isolated in this clean dwelling among their gadgets and computers. When Eva searches Kevin's characterless room, she finds his malevolence hiding in a computer disk which destroys her own and her business's system. In a smaller, poorer household in most cultures in the world he would have been clipped around the ear instead of being patiently appealed to by his parents. They seemed like suppliants at the court of Caligula. (I don't say that would have made him any less prone to extreme cruelty).
Most mothers have felt now and then that their misbehaving children are imps spawned by Satan sent to torment them. This feeling is distilled in this film, as is Kevin's malignancy, which is as motiveless as Michael Myers's in the Hallowe'en series. It's hinted that it's hereditary -, his mother has a harsh view of other people - but she is capable of love and has a passion for travel. Kevin is full of anomie in a 1950s existentialist way, - everything is dumb, life is absurd, hell is other people, so why not go on a murderous rampage? I found the film weird and disturbing - there's no real answer to someone who feels like that. I mean, I have one, which is find an activity which you lose yourself in (not killing sprees) and people to love who will love you back, and that will get you through the time, but it's a feeble response and not cinematic - too much like It's a Wonderful Life.
It is an amazing film - I saw it on Tuesday night. But I'm not sure I liked having my feelings entangled in it. I really really did not like the scenes where Kevin was cruel, particularly to his little sister.
Posted by: Andrew Coates | 01 December 2011 at 01:06 PM