We Need to Talk About Kevin

If you're looking for a movie to get you in the mood to spend time with your wonderful family this holiday season, do not go to see We Need to Talk About Kevin. I would also recommend avoiding it if you're in need of comfort, relaxation, joy, or fun. However, if you want a film that will give you a thoroughly satisfying emotional work out, you can't go wrong with the latest from art cinema auteur Lynne Ramsey's latest. A dazed and dazing exploration of familial hostilities, Kevin is about as black as the darkest pure chocolate, and will leave the same intense, bitter, lingering taste in your mouth.

The film is scattered, but not scatter-brained. We learn the story through bits and pieces, as past, present, and fantasy mingle and collide in some sort of horrible, waking dream replayed many times over. Even when the events seem clear, the emotions around them seem clouded, or vice versa. Ramsey is well aware how tangled a web she weaves, and unbeknownst to us has a very definite path laid out for us to follow. She knows when we are lost, when we’re confused, and when we’re wrong. She succeeds in building the tension through repetition and interruption, balancing the mystery of what happened in the past with an uncertainty of what is happening in the present.

Of course, these sorts of narratives always require more than just a well-laid plan to hold the film together. They need a strong foundation as well, something ever-present and tangible to keep the audience grounded while the narrative takes flight, to keep the story from getting lost in the storytelling. Usually this foundation can be found in the presence of a main character whose thoughts and emotions and even physical appearance give the audience a reference point by which they can understand the progress of the story. In cinema, of course, this burden has always fallen as much on the actor as the character. Therefore, a strong, captivating performance, such as given by Robert Mitchum in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past or Laura Dern in David Lynch's Inland Empire, is an absolute necessity.

Ramsey could not have done better for her central character, Eva, than Tilda Swinton, who gives the best performance of the year, and possibly of her career. She captures sorrow, hate, despair, pain, pleasure, and love with a passive frenzy that not only acts as a center of gravity for Ramsey's otherworldly storytelling, but also perfectly matches the bleak frenzy of the director's style. Like Empire's Dern, Swinton is not just the center of her film, she is the film. Everything we witness comes to us through her experience--though not always her point of view. Whether or not we find ourselves aligned with Eva at the finish, we end up so utterly acquainted with her perspective that the result is a feeling of intense intimacy, very rarely rivaled in current cinema--certainly not by any film this year.

Oddly, if Kevin has one weakness, it is a tendency to underestimate its audience. Though in her structure and her themes Ramsey presents a wonderfully challenging film, in her symbols and motifs she appears less bold. Some are obvious or recur too often, and in some unfortunate cases both--I might have accepted the uninspired analogy of bloody gore and meat sauce and jelly had I not been invited to consider it roughly every ten minutes. However, this one problem hardly detracts from the overall effect of the film and I suspect Ramsey was simply being cautious.

Again, Kevin is not for everyone. If you’re not up for an experience that will leave you utterly drained, go see something else this weekend. Young Adult is funny. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is pretty cool. New Year’s Eve has Zac Effron in it. But if you’re looking for something unique and powerful, something that will stick with you, something that you’ll be able to talk and argue and think about for a long while afterwards, We Need to Talk About Kevin is the way to go.

                                             Gus Spelman