{"id":6394,"date":"2011-12-20T22:47:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T12:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6394"},"modified":"2014-05-03T17:57:08","modified_gmt":"2014-05-03T07:57:08","slug":"we-need-to-talk-about-kevin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=6394","title":{"rendered":"We Need To Talk About Kevin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-picture\"<\/a><\/p>\n

During the mid to late Nineties I remember there was a speight of high school shootings in America.\u00a0 I don’t remember how many there were in total but it felt like you read about them once every couple of months.\u00a0 In the immediate aftermath, there was a bunch of talking heads in the media that blamed some easy targets:\u00a0 violent video games, violent movies and Marilyn Manson.\u00a0 A more measured response at the time raised questions about the parenting of these children.<\/p>\n

More recently, I also recall reading about a couple in Oklahoma a couple of years ago who made headlines for requesting to ‘return’ a child<\/a> that they adopted.\u00a0 Having had the child in their care for two years, they feared for their lives when they discovered the 11 year old kept a stash of butcher knives and lighters under his bed.<\/p>\n

All these stories popped up in my head as I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin<\/em>.\u00a0 The central conceit in this film is whether a child can be born inherently evil.\u00a0 What if you were a perfectly good parent and yet your child turned out to be a complete monster?\u00a0 And not just a monster in the sense that he won’t finish his homework.\u00a0 A monster who is a complete sociopath and does terrible things like…actually, I won’t spoil what it is that Kevin does.<\/p>\n

The reason why I won’t is because its part of the grizzly effectiveness of this film.\u00a0 We Need To Talk About Kevin<\/em> is one of the most uncomfortable and unsettling films I’ve seen in a long time.\u00a0 Director Lynne Ramsay opts to stray from the structure of the novel its based on and muddles the chhronology of the film.\u00a0 We know Kevin has obviously done something terrible based on how we see the community treating her mother Eva in the aftermath.\u00a0 We just don’t know what.\u00a0 And as we see Eva’s flashbacks to Kevin’s upbringing, we see that he didn’t just snap.\u00a0 He’s been building to his moment by progressively subjecting his mother to some seriously intense mental abuse.<\/p>\n

Of course, the big reveal at the end, where we find out what Kevin is done is terrible.\u00a0 But its much more than that.\u00a0 How would you feel as a parent if one of your kids purposefully maimed the other but you couldn’t quite prove it?\u00a0 How do you deal with a child that you are supposed to nurture who blatantly plays one parent against the other and turns people against you?<\/p>\n

Even Eva’s predicament at the start of the film, which isn’t Kevin’s fault, is a rather depressing proposition.\u00a0 Before giving birth she is a successful travel writer who made a living travelling to all corners of the Earth.\u00a0 She was successful, independant and invigorated.\u00a0 After the unplanned pregnancy, she becomes a full time housewife in the suburbs who clearly still pines for her old life.<\/p>\n

The complex and difficult character of Eva is impeccably portrayed by the excellent Tilda Swinton.\u00a0 I know Swinton has the reputation of being a fine actor but this is my first experience seeing her in a meaty role such as this.\u00a0 Primarily, I associate her with her most famous role as the Ice Queen in the Narnia<\/em> film.\u00a0 Aloof, stoic and unemotional.\u00a0 Here she is vulnerable, exhasperated and mesmerising to watch.\u00a0 She is not supposed to be the perfect mother.\u00a0 The film wouldn’t work if she was.\u00a0 Instead she is relatable.\u00a0 She tries her best.\u00a0 She gets frustrated.\u00a0 She loses her cool.\u00a0 But she is smart.\u00a0 She regathers her thoughts.\u00a0 Tries new strategies to build a relationship with Kevin.\u00a0 And then gets increasingly desperate and disengaged when it fails.<\/p>\n

We Need To Talk About Kevin<\/em> is an unrelenting pile of misery for its full two hour running time.\u00a0 Clearly this is a film that you need to be in the right mood for, given its challenging emotional content.\u00a0 But for those who are game, there is an interesting, thought provoking film here with outstanding performances from both Swinton and Ezra Miller as Kevin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Problem Child III – The High School Years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1132,1133,1131],"class_list":["post-6394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-ezra-miller","tag-tilda-swinton","tag-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6394"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14301,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6394\/revisions\/14301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}