The sound of him savouring the juicy fruit a fruit he doesn't even like in deliberate crunches of sinister delight becomes unsettling when paired with the thought of Celia's lost eye. True paternal love would have been expressed as abiding concern for the man his son could grow up to be if there really was a danger of mental illness, and result in the appropriate physical and mental health care to avoid a catastrophe. But Eva is incapable of showing him the love that he deserves, even after trying her best. Kevin is a defiant baby who screams incessantly but never around Franklin. Eva rushes to the school to see Kevin getting arrested. The desolate inner worlds of Ramsay's protagonists come alive through a sensory perspective. A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores the relationship between a mother and her evil son. Kevin's killings, meanwhile, are the absent, invisible center of Ramsay's film. it's difficult to accept why Eva keeps visiting her son in jail, at one point even asking why he did it. Privacy | Swinton is collecting a bevy of early plaudits and nominations, as well she should. You tell me." His willful misbehaviors continue as his mother becomes more estranged from him. Does she ever. Or did Kevin turned this way because she messed him up from the very birth. Kevin replies that he thought he knew why but now hes not sure anymore. Eve disobeyed, she ate the apple and she was punished by becoming not only human but also a mother. The name itself Eva is not chosen by chance, echoing the fatally disobedient woman of the Bible, whose act determined the loss of the Garden of Eden. When the child Kevin is sick and nuzzles close to his mother as she reads, his father comes to the door and is rejected in favor of his mother, the look on Evas face is one of wonder and delight. The camera zooms in, but the scene cuts just before we can get a peek on what's on the other side of it. Kevin is neither rational nor articulate enough to identify his desire, that is, to have an authentic and fully realized relationship with his mother. But Ramsay is less interested in the blame game, more in how trauma can put us in a vicious cycle of self-inflicted pain. Kevin has a real emotional attachment to his bow because the only time his mother showed him genuine affection was when he had the flu, and she read Robin Hood to him. We see it perfectly after he blinds Celia - Eva attempts to confront him about what he's done, and he sits chewing a water chestnut to impress the image of plucking out an eye on Eva, just to watch the horror on her face. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. The film ends with the emotionally blank mother visiting her son on the second anniversary of his crimes, just before he's transferred to an adult prison. Or maybe I'm somehow getting it mixed up with another film! Kevin chooses to conceal the incident from Franklin. He grows into a spiteful toddler, refusing to say "mommy" and egging on her frustrations. Selena Gomez recently opened up on how the autoimmune condition is affecting her weight due to water retention from all the medication in her recent Tik-Tok live stream. Only with her because his father was at work whole day and saw his son for like an hour a day. Little matters like washing blood red paint off the windows of her diminished home that angry residents have vandalized, become rituals of self-abnegation and penance. Last March, Bruce Willis family said his aphasia had affected his cognitive abilities. Ramsay improves on Shriver's portrait of a mother with an honesty that leaves us thinking about Eva long after the credits roll. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva is literally on trial for parental negligence. I watched this film several years ago and decided today I'd watch it again as I really enjoyed it the first time round! Between the ages of 6 and 8 years old, played by Jasper Newell, he is a clever little monster who glares at Eva hurtfully, soils his pants deliberately and drives her into such a fury that she breaks his arm. Franklin's story is simpler but in some ways I think it's worse. Go do something. Ramsay regularly cuts to a scene where Eva is driving her car past flashing police lights toward the scene of some tragedy. Directed by Lynne Ramsay, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is fragments of time, jagged and confusing, lurching around inside her mind. The two embrace, and then she walks away. In Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood, Sarah Arnold identifies how mothers as characters suffer from a Manichean oversimplification, or as she calls it the unstable ideology of idealised motherhood. Go. See movies like "The innocents" (1961, Jack Clayton) (pay attention to the title) and "The omen" (1976, Richard Donner). I could have sworn that during the first time I watched it there was a scene of Kevin, Franklin and Celia in the garden and it shows how Kevin actually murdered them. We Need to Talk About Kevin is already playing in NYC; it opens today in LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix and is rolling out nationwide. There's the Good Mother, like Diane Freeling who travels to another dimension to save her daughter in Poltergeist. After you see the film, think about it. All the community rules apply here. It'd be so much fun. Franklin and Kevin have no special connections like that, and Franklin appropriates Eva's so that he can have something manly to do with his son. Some of the content presented on our sites has been provided by fans, other unofficial websites or online news sources, and is the sole responsibility of the source from which it was obtained. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined. By. He proves it when he poops himself twice in a row and she breaks his arm in a fit of rage, what he calls, "The most honest thing you ever did to me." 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. The ending of the film leaves Eva's fate up in the air. I felt like I kind of joked with Jeff Loveness on this, but I was like, Did you just watch 300 and write my character? Because it was a lot of like those single line, Get to the tower!, and just kind of like silly one liners and things that felt reminiscent of a lot of those just straight up warrior movies. We Need to Talk About Kevin is already playing in NYC; it opens today in LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix and is rolling out nationwide. From ths beginning of the movie they lay out the whole story, but it isn't until you watch the full thing that you piece everything together and get this larger than life story. There have been a lot of discussions nature vs. nurture, but I've been thinking she was not ok during pregnancy, usually postpartum depression starts after birth. In reality, Kevin has an acquired taste for sadistic vengeance, and the lychee symbolizes Celias eye in the scene. Eva gets pregnant for a second time and gives birth to a little daughter Celia. When she asks him that honest question, having accepted the reality of her abuse towards him, she comes to him totally honest And he no longer feels that underlying connection between love and fear that motivated him to his actions. I bring what is actually happening and the severity of what's actually happening to level out, I guess, this part of the movie, because on the other side, you got Kang and Janet are being very, very serious too on that side of things. Genres: Psychological Drama, Family Drama. A young MAN and WOMAN are asleep in a tent. As a teenager, Kevin (now played by Ezra Miller) has started to cruelly resemble his mother in profile and hairstyle. For removal of copyrighted images, trademarks, or other issues, Contact Us. Any spoilers should be placed in spoiler tags as such. Kevin grows up, and the family moves to an affluent neighborhood in their very own castle. Advertise, Funny Superhero (DC & Marvel) Shirts & Stickers. Little Kevin cries relentlessly, and Eva often uses cruel methods to shut him up. This turns out to be some sort of annual Italian tomato festival, but the image is disturbing. ET. It is a world where any attempts to offer a message of mercy, conversion and redemption must be done deftly and authentically, because at the end of the day, sometimes the community won't rally around you and more often than not Mr. Potter carries the day. ROHAN: Since Jentorra and most of her freedom fighters make it out alive, have you heard anything about coming back for more Quantum Realm adventures down the line? Like a fluke, nothing to do with her personality or her hubby's personality? Besides their physical likeness, Eva and Kevin also share a certain coldness, which plays into Eva's self-hatred. But we can safely assume that Kevin did not literally eat the eyeball. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva is literally on trial for parental negligence. Hes a friendly and vibrant young priest and a gifted preacher. You couldnt have possibly thought that seeing someone eat lychee would be so distressing, but Ezra Miller makes it happen. She is less interested in the nature vs nurture debate, more in the crippling weight of societal expectations of motherhood. KATY: We had this whole scene where we're all cheering at the end kind of thing. Yet it is in those infrequent instances of relief, conversion and mercy that the film finds its identity and direction. Then she goes home. We see Kevin as a troubled kid who may need greater care. this is the best pro-antinatalism PSA out there . So we must find our Grace in the minuscule, and it is in these brief moments of consolation, these shafts of light under the door, that Kevin provides the deft sucker punch to the, by now, standard narrative benchmarks of despair, emptiness and futility which permeate contemporary film. Swinton is excellent as Eva, the reluctant mother tormented by her psychopathic son, and director Lynne Ramsay handles the disjointed time structure well, but that's about all I can commend about it. 1 'Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum' (2018) Image via Showbox. See production, box office & company info. I'd be happy to see what they come up with, but, they have more of the understanding of the wildness of the world that they're building. That the film works so brilliantly is a tribute in large part to the actors. Crypto It suffers from an excess of clunky foreshadowing and there's very little I find believable about the characters' actions. You know, it's all fun and games until you really understand that every single decision that you make impacts everybody. Prosecutors downgrade charges in Alec Baldwin shooting case, Die Hard star Bruce Willis has frontotemporal dementia, condition worsens, As We Need to Talk about Kevin turns 10, a look at what made it such a haunting meditation on motherhood. Eva has spent the events of the film in deep introspection, coming to terms with the fact that she was an abusive mother, and at least some of what happened grew out of that. Rather, Ramsay's film is an extended treatment of the optics of grief and guilt. As he grows up, we see him in a blue t-shirt, and consecutively, in a bland white one. Before the film opens, the character referred to in the title of Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, at the age of 15, has massacred a number of his fellow schoolmates. Read More: Best Movies About Mental Illness. Jake Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, comedian and writer. By provoking her, Kevin is able to get some precious emotional honesty out of her. It doesn't gel with what has come before, where Eva seems to accept her son's innate cruelty, and is looking for a way to escape. It must be something like this to have a nervous breakdown. The real horror in the movie is society's dogmatic conception of motherhood, and the pressure to live up to it. We're supposed to understand Kevin through Eva's flashbacks, which are indeed confusing, but not chronologically, where the difference lies solely in Tilda Swinton's hairstyle. Indeed, one of. Kevin eats the lychee with a degree of grossness, and when his mother says that he never liked lychee as a fruit, Kevin has to say that it is an acquired taste. All of the performances are secondary to an urgently compelling narrative that is both agonizing to witness and impossible to look away from. This review of the film was originally published on December 22, 2011. GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. The source material for "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was purposely crafted to leave readers wondering who was responsible for the massacre. Helmed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay based on the Orange Prize-winning eponymous 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is a jarring, erratic, and sometimes profoundly disturbing 2011 psychological thriller that creates an uncanny place in the viewer's mind. Likewise, don't respond to trollish comments; just report them and ignore them. Scan this QR code to download the app now. About 5 uses of "fuck" (once used sexually by a 7-year-old child), one use of "cunt". Helmed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay based on the Orange Prize-winning eponymous 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a jarring, erratic, and sometimes profoundly disturbing 2011 psychological thriller that creates an uncanny place in the viewers mind. Lionel Shriver's source novel is a quirky, disturbing take on the high school killer story. Now, mommy wakes up every morning and wishes she was in France! Keep your comments focused on the film. So, what did that exchange mean for the Khatchadourians? Home | Kevin gets taught about sex from his mother but he already knows what it is and calls it "fucking". Evas struggle to connect with Kevin only deepens with age. Because children are normally associated with innocence, creepy children are a tried concept in horror films. So is Amelia in The Babadook. She is the wrong person in the wrong life with the wrong child. So, I think it'd be really, really cool to see if they came up with something else. Kevin is a story of hope for a new millennium, an Its a Wonderful Life in the age of school shootings and planes crashing into buildings a world-weary world that has been bombarded by nihilistic themes in their narratives for the better part of a century. It's been 10 years since its world premiere at Cannes, and we need to talk about what made it such a haunting meditation on motherhood. KATY: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it would be drawn from movies, essentially. She could move away for a fresh start, but she's shown setting up a room for him, complete with his navy blue bedding and Robin Hood book. Jokes are fine, but don't post tactless/inappropriate ones. Don't comment just to troll/provoke. Franklin, on the other hand, does not give him a path to honest interactions. Her emotional state doesnt change even when Kevin is born. Will she continue living in their hometown, where she's harassed by locals who blame her for the deaths? Through association and contextualization, it becomes evident that Kevin killed his father and sister with the new and powerful bow and arrow that he received as a Christmas present from his father. For much of the film, she lives with her husband, son and daughter in an expensive suburban home, and when we realize they've lived there for several years, we begin to wonder, how can four people occupy a home for over a decade and not accumulate anything? It is so ingrained in our culture even a fellow grieving mother slaps her in the parking lot. The result is that Franklin completely deprives Kevin of proper care - not only mental healthcare, but any other kind of care. Nature refers to how they were born, while nurture refers to how they were raised. She makes one feel her strung to the breaking point tension in scene after scene. Starting with Eva - she is intentionally painting herself in the worst possible light, which ironically covers up the actual extent of her emotional abuse, since she is flagellating herself only for the worst moments of her parenthood - the lowlights - and not looking at the whole picture. Kevin knows that Celia is his mothers favorite offspring, and he goes to great lengths to make his mother feel uncomfortable. We find ourselves inside the mind of a woman whose psychopathic son has driven her over the edge. At first glance, it would seem that Kevin is yet another installment in the pantheon of post-modern films intent upon assaulting the human desire to give meaning to the world. Swinton gives an outstanding performance, somehow managing to repeatedly convey implacability and vulnerability in the same moment. Trademark | Ramsay builds on Shriver's idea of internalised blame with how Eva sees herself following the tragedy. Try refreshing this page.If the problem persists, contact our support contact our support Eva can only play at being mommy, and so when Kevin refuses her attempts to breastfeed and is only appeased by the presence of his affable father, played by John C. Reilly, her whole world crashes down around her and her value as a person comes into question. Speaking with O'Brian following the film's release, she shared her experience on working on the biggest project of her career and how she and director Peyton Reed crafted an elaborate backstory for the leader of the rebellion. Her only crime was perhaps hurrying into the role before she was ready. Instead, maternal ambivalence is coded as horror. She has something of an answer as to why Kevin committed such terrors, but where does that leave her? Sometimes Zuzu's petals are all you have to hold onto. However, the story's unflinching refusal to provide answers for who was responsible carries over. Kevins reaction is an indictment of both Eva and audiences expectations and their desire for his complicity in perpetrating the fraud. Eva, in turn, becomes more protective of Celia. The film moves without any pattern between past, present and who knows when. Her public perception is unlikely to change, but Eva appears firm in her choice to stick around for Kevin's sake. But it also doesn't set out to wag a moral finger or make any grand, sweeping statements. We also did a lot of blue screen work before, which really helps with the imagination. SPOILER. Votes are used to help determine the most interesting content on RYM. Kevin does not play ball, and he becomes increasingly manipulative. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is a movie adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel with the same title. Top Films of the 2010s as voted for by RYM (2021/Final edition), NEW TOURNAMENT: [PPE] RYM Picks the Most Outstanding Acting Performances in Cinematic History, Top Films of the 2010s as voted for by RYM (2020 edition), Top Films of the 2010s as voted for by RYM (2019 edition), Dark/Sinister films that have upbeat music during the credits, Top Films of the 2010s as voted for by RYM (2018 edition), RYM's Preferred Female Performances: 2011, Top Films of the 2010s as voted for by RYM (2017 edition), United Kingdom, United States, 35mm, Color, Dolby Stereo, Literary Adaptation, Artificial Eye, Code Red, Oscilloscope Pictures. With Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver plays with the deepest fears of the majority of people. Also read:Author Lionel Shriver on her early writing, politics, essential reading list and persevering out of 'sheer spite'. Kevin poops in his pants, and thinking this act to be deliberate, Eva throws him to the ground, breaking his arm. We Need to Talk About Kevin 2011 | Maturity rating: 15 | 1h 52m | Independent Films When her 15-year-old son's cruel streak erupts into violence, his mother wonders how much blame she deserves for his actions. For mothers always seem to be on trial. The film primarily shows you the pathos of evil by painting a portrait of a deeply and violently disturbed young man from his mother's point of view, and you watch how this relationship built and how that pathos developed. March 1, 2023, 6:00 a.m. Don't get in arguments with people here, or start long discussions. As a baby and toddler, he is merely colicky, irritating and would try the patience of a saint. Copyright | May 12, 2021 12:33:39 IST. The real monster is expecting nothing less than unconditional love. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined. This is the scene where the film begins and the ending comes full circle revisiting the moment of rupture in Evas life. to revoke its approval of the two main drugs used for medication abortion in the United States. So, that part I kind of liked because it shows, okay, this is what someone who's still fighting, interacting with someone who kind of essentially gave in. KATY: Yeah, I was so jealous, because I really loved it. Not that she has a ton of options she struggles to find work and be accepted by those around her. Annie Graham in Hereditary is conflicted by feelings of love and hate, resentment and remorse, towards her son. However, just the neglect of his mother would not amount to the cathartic finale. Fr. Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly I got to try some fight choreo, but all in all, yeah, it helped me prepare, I will say I was much more excited to be a good guy instead of a lame, side character, bad guy. Apparently even before he began to talk, Kevin made a vow to punish Eva for her feelings. KATY: It was really different, obviously, than the comic book version. His eyes dont give away any sense of remorse or guilt. What kind of a kitchen has empty counters? Stripping the screenplay off words, the disturbance arises from a seamless amalgamation of image and sound. Kevin does things to Eva in this movie that are so cruel that an evil demon seems to be regarding her from his eyes. Firstpost - All Rights Reserved. In You Were Never Really Here, Joaquin Phoenix was a hitman beset by PTSD. He grows into a spiteful toddler, refusing to say "mommy" and egging on her frustrations. His reply: "You don't want to kill your audience.". She has a career as a writer put on hold, while her husband Franklin (O'Reilly, at his most oblivious) carries on. When he is interviewed on TV, a reflection of Eva's face on the screen is overlaid on his. KATY: Oh, I'd love to come back. Following the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we caught up with actress Katy O'Brian to talk about her MCU debut as Jentorra, deleted scenes with Bill Murray, and a whole lot more! We Need to Talk about Kevin in fact needs to be talked about, as what it is attempting to do by marrying the darkest, most nihilistic components of contemporary cinema with a redemptive message is groundbreaking. Maternal ambivalence turns into filial antagonism, colouring her perception of him as inherently evil. A prolific writer and the ostensible head of a travel agency, Eva cares more about her own unfulfilled wishes than her ever-menacing son. Left to pick up the pieces is his mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton). Although the act is enhanced through visual obscurity and concealment, we get the idea that Kevin kills a few of his classmates in the locked auditorium. Kevin examines both our darkest moments and those slivers of Grace that sustain us. That's a deeply human tale, and it calls to us, and I think that's why I see takes on the movie saying that it even encourages the viewer to think evil is in our nature and is immutable. Fast forward to fifteen year old Kevin, and we can see that this habit has become his worldview. Though unlike the Shakespearean character, the question of Evas guilt has a lot less cut-and-dried answer. Near the top of the list of the worst movies to watch on Mother's Day is "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Updated Date: From the beginning, Eva is detached from motherhood. In a fit of rage at Kevin's soiling his diapers (at 7), Eva throws him down and breaks his arm. Reilly is typically wonderful in a thankless role, while both juvenile actors evince a low-grade rage that never moves into complete disconnection or full-blown psychosis. The truth to motherhood is a harsh one. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg's response to Donald Trump's refusal to accept any responsibility for the impact his massive deregulations have had went viral on Thursday as video of him encouraging the ex-president to support the Biden administration's efforts went viral. For more information, please see our Does their parental neglect make them culpable for the lives he took? We Need to Talk About Kevin is a 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver. Alienated from friends and community, all she has left is her son. When the teenage Kevin surprisingly assents to a mother/son date, Eva is hopeful for the opportunity to cultivate a deeper relationship. Copyright 2023. Ramsay establishes a sense of aloofness in Eva with Kevin still in utero. Three days before his 16th birthday, Kevin Khatchadourian (Ezra Miller) kills several students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker in his high school gymnasium. It is a world where any attempts to offer a message of mercy, conversion and redemption must be done deftly and authentically, because at the end of the day, sometimes the community wont rally around you and more often than not Mr. Potter carries the day.

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