We Need To Talk About Kevin Review

We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel, was released last week. I wasn’t expecting to be reviewing it, but somehow the plan changed from seeing The Adventures of Tintin to seeing this.

I hadn’t read the book before seeing the film, but given that pretty much everyone else has, I’m not going to worry about giving away spoilers. Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) have two children. One, Celia, is a sweet, perfect little girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She idolises her older brother, Kevin (Ezra Miller), who, unfortunately, is a raving sociopath. The trouble is, only Eva can see it, and it is she who has to deal with the consequences when Kevin commits a high school massacre. The film follows their relationship from his birth to her visits to him in prison.

The title is an odd one. Eva and Franklin certainly did need to talk about Kevin, but they never broach the subject. The onus is on Eva to tell Franklin about what a monster he is, but she doesn’t do it forcefully enough – he brushes away her concerns and she gives up. Is she ashamed of her perceived failings as a mother? Does she tell herself she is over-reacting? Or does she simply lack the courage to bring up the possibility that her son has somehow become a lunatic? Even after it is implied that Kevin and a bottle of bleach are responsible for the loss of one of Celia’s eyes, which Eva suspects, she does nothing. Is she the real monster here? This might explain the way she stays in town after the massacre when she could have moved away, as a kind of penance for her inaction. Tilda Swinton will almost certainly get an Oscar nomination for her finely-balanced performance as a mother struggling to connect with her son and carry on after he has made her life almost unliveable.

Ramsay provides no motivation for Kevin’s actions, seeming to suggest that he was evil from birth. Often, as with the Columbine massacre, the perpetrators are ostracised from their peers, but we never see Kevin at school or interacting with anyone other than his family. We see him throughout his life: only stopping his crying when held by Franklin rather than Eva as a baby and spraying paint all over the walls of Eva’s map room as a toddler. However, Eva can be seen as a classic unreliable narrator. Looking back over Kevin’s life, she may be twisting events to show that he was evil from birth, when really her lack of empathy towards him as a woman who never wanted to have children pushed him towards his unenviable place in history. Ramsay leaves this up to the viewer, but her direction throughout is largely cliché-ridden and ponderous. She obviously doubts her audience’s intelligence, pointlessly featuring the colour red in almost every scene, from jam sandwiches to cans of tomato soup, as a signpost to the horror yet to come, when I’m sure most people would have understood her intention in the first five minutes of the film. In addition, the flashbacks and flashforwards are initially confusing – until Kevin is born, it is difficult to tell exactly where you are in the narrative.

The film’s greatest achievement is the way it portrays the ambiguity of the relationship between Kevin and Eva, as well as the reasons behind Kevin’s massacre of his classmates. Fittingly in the run-up to Halloween, it comes across as a very modern horror film, let down only by its clogged direction.

3.5/5

My Favourite 10 Opening Scenes

This is fairly self-explanatory - my favourite opening scenes, not necessarily "the best" in terms of filming or dialogue or anything like that.

10. Narc

This criminally underrated cop thriller begins with the bluest, fastest, most intense foot chase scene you’ll ever see, made incredibly visceral by a shaky hand-held camera and a lack of distracting soundtrack. Having picked this up for 50p from a going-out-of-business DVD rental shop and not really expecting anything groundbreaking from it, this scene absolutely floored me. And it’s not even the best part of the film.

9. Inglourious Basterds

I could equally have gone for the openings of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Vol. 1 as my Tarantino choice but the introduction to SS Colonel Hans Landa is so beautifully paced, shot and acted that it pretty much chose itself. A more compelling scene based on social niceties and milk quality you’ll never see.

8. The Breakfast Club

We hear “Don’t You Forget About Me”, which always compels me to air-drum. We hear the letter they write at the end. We get introduced to all of the kids as they turn up for detention, which establishes their characters – the brain, the athlete, the princess, the basket-case and the criminal. It’s an economical beginning, but a memorable, completely John Hughesian one. 

7. Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels

A very cool opening to a very cool film. From Jason Statham’s market patter to Ocean Colour Scene’s “Hundred Mile High City” soundtracking, there’s practically nothing to dislike about it. Apart from Statham throwing the open suitcase down the stairs in slo-mo – I still don’t know why he does that, and it pisses me off every time I see it.

6. Once Upon A Time In The West

I can’t think of an opening sequence that takes so long to get to such a quick payoff. We watch the three hired goons (originally intended to be Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, apparently) wait for Harmonica for about 10 minutes during the credits – he turns up, makes a crack about the number of horses they brought and kills them. It’s incredible how hooked you can get on so little action.

5. Goodfellas

I couldn’t not have a Scorsese one in here somewhere. Pitching us in at the middle of the story, we get gratuitous violence immediately juxtaposed with a jazzy, upbeat Tony Bennett song symbolising the glamour of the gangster life, along with Henry Hill’s immortal line: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Iconic isn’t even the word.

4. Mission:Impossible III

Considering M:I-2 was ultimately quite a fun, harmless film, the opening of its sequel is pretty harrowing. Like Goodfellas, we’re thrown into the middle of the film with Ethan Hunt trying to convince Philip Seymour Hoffman not to shoot his wife. Very tense, very dark. Tom Cruise actually doing some good acting.  

3. The Godfather

“I believe in America.” The camera starting close-up on Bonasera’s face and zooming out slowly over Corleone’s shoulder. The stray cat that had been wandering around the set and was dropped into Brando’s lap just before the scene started. The tux. Duvall and Caan. “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me.” Genius.

2. Raiders Of The Lost Ark

I once ripped this off for a story I wrote at school when I was about 10 – for some reason I assumed that the teacher hadn’t seen Raiders but obviously he had. Anyway, the opening introduces you to all the key element of the Indy series – the whip, the archaeology (grave-robbing), the fear of snakes, the triumphing against adversity, etc. And the theme tune. Love the theme tune. 

1. Saving Private Ryan

Now I know that the opening scene is technically the one with old James Ryan in the French war cemetery, but whenever I consider my favourite opening scene, I always come back to this one. Shot in desaturated colours by Janusz Kaminski, it’s the leading up to storming the beach that always gets me rather than when they actually get onto it. Has to be the best battle sequence ever filmed, if only because of how realistic it seems.