Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tilda Swinton is a parent at the end of her tether dealing with her out of control son Kevin, a problem from an early age. A problem that no one else around her seems to want to take seriously. However, as Kevin (played as a teenager by Ezra Miller) gets older, his violent, sociopathic behaviour will become outright dangerous and deadly. John C. Reilly plays Kevin’s ineffectual, somewhat mild-mannered father, who doesn’t seem to want to see a problem with his son.

 

I get it. No one’s talking about Kevin except Tilda Swinton’s character and that’s the chief problem/subject matter outlined in this 2011 adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel by director Lynne Ramsay and co-writer Rory Kinnear (the actor son of the late, great Roy Kinnear). Someone needed to talk about Kevin a long time ago before he went and did something horrible. So it’s not like I don’t understand the point of the film, I certainly do. The problem for me (or one of them) is that the filmmakers ultimately don’t seem interested in Kevin either, and spend 99.99% of the film focussed on Tilda Swinton and almost the entirety of the rest of the percentage showing off how much of an awesome director they are. Even for the point that the filmmakers are making, it still needed to focus a lot more on Kevin so that we actually understand the situation – and Kevin – enough to care. Nah, the film can’t be bothered with that.

 

For starters, the whole thing has been directed and edited like someone with ADHD. It needed a more human, down-to-earth treatment, not some arty, MTV mosaic approach. Oooh, it’s mimicking her fragmented state of mind. Eye roll. Sorry, but I came here for Kevin, and in addition to being arty-farty crap, this really bothered the hell out of me because it’s potentially fascinating subject matter. The film mostly focuses on the mother, but you actually get the message after about 5 minutes anyway. The woman is stressed out because she’s the only one who wants to deal with Kevin. I don’t need 90 minutes of a stressed-out character unless a Babadook is involved, thank you. I got the idea pretty quickly, you could’ve moved on after that.

 

The film also wastes the dramatic talents of John C. Reilly, who I think ought to do more dramatic work – he’s really good, even when wasted here. You see, the film’s not interested in Reilly either, and it should’ve been. He’s the father for crying out loud. I also frankly didn’t buy Tilda Swinton in this role. I fully buy her turning up in something arty-farty, it’s her thing. But playing this particular wife and mother I just wasn’t really feeling her. Icy villainy, upper-crust characters, a blood-sucking vampire, an alien from outer space – those are roles I can see her in very easily. Here…nah, though her overall performance itself was less a problem than her actual casting. Unless the character was intended to lack maternal qualities (which may be a possibility, actually), I think the role needed someone a little less chilly, more down-to-earth, I think to play this long-suffering mother character. The much-loved Frances McDormand perhaps could’ve done it, the underrated Maria Bello I could see, possibly even Nicole Kidman on a rare good day. That said, I didn’t much care for the actor playing the title character either, so it’s not just Swinton. I initially thought Ezra Miller (terrific in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”) would be pitch-perfect casting as the very troubled, sociopathic Kevin. Unfortunately, instead of making Kevin a realistic sociopath, Miller has seemingly been instructed (or encouraged) to play the role as a snarky little shit instead. He doesn’t seem to be the killer-type (if there is such a thing as a ‘killer-type’), so Miller’s rather phony, overly smug performance didn’t really work for me at all. Also, by the time the film does start focussing more on Kevin, it was too late for me to care anyway.

 

It’s such a shame that director Ramsay can’t get out of the way of her own film. It often plays like an arty music video, something you might see for Massive Attack or New Order even. I wanted a lot less of the filmmaker and a lot more of the story and characters, please. What could’ve been a really interesting and shattering look at a young sociopath and his mother’s attempt at dealing with his behaviour, ends up playing like an arty film school student’s pretentious first assignment. The filmic approach for me ruined any interest in the story or characters (apparently the original novel had a far more straightforward narrative that sounds more appealing to me).

 

Tilda Swinton is miscast, she doesn’t belong in films set in the real world. She belongs in Narnia or at least the heightened post-apocalyptic setting of “Snowpiercer”. The film is chilly, pretentious, frustrating, and not enough Kevin. What makes the kid tick? Mental illness? Evil? We never find out. I Hated this, your mileage may wildly differ. The story and themes had potential. I could see it being someone’s idea of a masterpiece, but it’s my least favourite kind of filmmaking and I didn’t think it was a terribly well-made example of such filmmaking style either.

 

Rating: D