We Need To Talk About Kevin (15.)
Directed by Lynne Ramsey.
Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Ashley Gerasinovich. 110 mins
Sometimes the best career move is to do nothing. It is ten years since Lynne Ramsey made the mesmerising Morvern Callar and in that time she has grown into something of a cinematic giant, mainly because she didn’t get to make the film version of The Lovely Bones.
Instead of getting to make the film of the famous book about a teenager who had something dreadful happen to her, she gets to make the film of the famous book about a teenager who does something dreadful. Her approach to book adaptation is the opposite of Jackson’s film-what-you-read literalism; her film is more a companion piece than adaptation taking the key elements and spinning them into a bleak reverie spun around a streamlined selection of characters and situations from it. The book is taken as read, its story isn’t so much told as obliquely referenced.
The fragmented, associative narrative edges towards its central horror from two directions. We see Eve (Swinton) after the event where she is shunned and blamed by the local community, and before as she tries to raise her demon child Kevin. Eve is a career woman, a travel writer, who suffers a terrible fate – she gives birth to a natural born teenager. Even as a toddler Kevin is confrontational, contrary and evil. Casually manipulative he is able to twist his father (John C Reilly) around his little finger.
The film exerts a strange wrenching grip. Ramsey’s skill and method is an accumulation of the telling little details that make it seem real and lived in. A fraught drive through a neighbourhood at Halloween is beautifully done. But in focusing so tightly on Eve the film feels a little sealed up. We only get her view of Kevin which is that he is basically Damien without the theology.
There is sense that Eve is being punished for being a career woman and not some fecund earth mother. Swinton resembles a cross between Charles Hawtrey and Vanessa Redgrave in a Joan of Arc hairdo in the scenes where Kevin is young and she seems to be living out a guilt-ridden martyrdom in the scenes set after Kevin’s very bad deeds.
Arguably this doesn’t quite, emphasise on the quite, match up to the standard of Callar or, even the phantom Lovely Bones that exists in the collective imagination of film lovers, but iss a very impressive return for Ramsey.
We Need To Talk About Kevin (15.)
Directed by Lynne Ramsey.
Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Ashley Gerasinovich. 110 mins
Sometimes the best career move is to do nothing. It is ten years since Lynne Ramsey made the mesmerising Morvern Callar and in that time she has grown into something of a cinematic giant, mainly because she didn’t get to make the film version of The Lovely Bones.
Instead of getting to make the film of the famous book about a teenager who had something dreadful happen to her, she gets to make the film of the famous book about a teenager who does something dreadful. Her approach to book adaptation is the opposite of Jackson’s film-what-you-read literalism; her film is more a companion piece than adaptation taking the key elements and spinning them into a bleak reverie spun around a streamlined selection of characters and situations from it. The book is taken as read, its story isn’t so much told as obliquely referenced.
The fragmented, associative narrative edges towards its central horror from two directions. We see Eve (Swinton) after the event where she is shunned and blamed by the local community, and before as she tries to raise her demon child Kevin. Eve is a career woman, a travel writer, who suffers a terrible fate – she gives birth to a natural born teenager. Even as a toddler Kevin is confrontational, contrary and evil. Casually manipulative he is able to twist his father (John C Reilly) around his little finger.
The film exerts a strange wrenching grip. Ramsey’s skill and method is an accumulation of the telling little details that make it seem real and lived in. A fraught drive through a neighbourhood at Halloween is beautifully done. But in focusing so tightly on Eve the film feels a little sealed up. We only get her view of Kevin which is that he is basically Damien without the theology.
There is sense that Eve is being punished for being a career woman and not some fecund earth mother. Swinton resembles a cross between Charles Hawtrey and Vanessa Redgrave in a Joan of Arc hairdo in the scenes where Kevin is young and she seems to be living out a guilt-ridden martyrdom in the scenes set after Kevin’s very bad deeds.
Arguably this doesn’t quite, emphasise on the quite, match up to the standard of Callar or, even the phantom Lovely Bones that exists in the collective imagination of film lovers, but iss a very impressive return for Ramsey.
