Franklin didn't do that - he wasn't even there. Kevin knows that Celia is his mothers favorite offspring, and he goes to great lengths to make his mother feel uncomfortable. I mean, there's no room for the leader of the rebellion to give up. We had a lot more time to prepare for the character, had a lot more time to delve into the script and the role wasn't just like, you know, here's four pages, learn it by tonight, you know? However, we dont really know why Kevin kills his family. Before the film opens, the character referred to in the title of Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, at the age of 15, has massacred a number of his fellow schoolmates. ROHAN: Considering that you had done Black Lightningand Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,and already gotten a small taste of superhero projects before stepping into this massive MCU project. Although the act is enhanced through visual obscurity and concealment, we get the idea that Kevin kills a few of his classmates in the locked auditorium. Try refreshing this page.If the problem persists, contact our support contact our support The camera zooms in, but the scene cuts just before we can get a peek on what's on the other side of it. Did they create a monster, or was he born that way? ; Black Lightning) played this powerful new character, who has been engaged in this ongoing struggleagainst Kang (Jonathan Majors) for far longer than most and has paid an incomparableprice while trying to liberate her people from his rule. Does Eva's open contempt for Kevin drive him to darkness? Kevin keeps the secret of how this happens and a strange complicity develops between the mother and son. After you see the film, think about it. The film does not show us how Kevin presents the eyeball to Eva in jail. Growing up with a cold mother does not turn one into mass murdered either. Ramsay regularly cuts to a scene where Eva is driving her car past flashing police lights toward the scene of some tragedy. ROHAN: Since Jentorra and most of her freedom fighters make it out alive, have you heard anything about coming back for more Quantum Realm adventures down the line? For Kevin, maternal love and attention have become completely conflated with disgust and fear. However it wasn't in the film I watched today and I can't find the scene anywhere..did I just imagine this scene?! The kid was screaming nonstop from the go, as infant. American release: January 27, 2012. Nature refers to how they were born, while nurture refers to how they were raised. Crypto Apparently even before he began to talk, Kevin made a vow to punish Eva for her feelings. Kevin appears in a short sleeve red shirt as a toddler. Nicoletta Vallorani in her essay Of women and children: Bad mothers as rough heroes, reads a Biblical metaphor into We Need to Talk About Kevin. Kevin's antics swell into violence during his teenage years, further driving a wedge between his parents and mutilating his little sister Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich) along the way. We Need to Talk About Kevin is already playing in NYC; it opens today in LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix and is rolling out nationwide. The bed, the gown, and the walls bleed into each other in their cold whiteness, externalising her inner state of mind. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. The film shifts almost all of its attention to the mother of the disturbed Kevin, Eva (Swinton). Together, with Hopes parents Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Scotts daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought possible. Kevin relentlessly cries in the custody of Eva, but Franklin seems to know how to stop him. They never talk about Kevin. But he hates her the most due to her pretense and dishonesty, it seems. So, I think TV being as fast paced as it is, and as kind of chaotic as it can be, it doesn't always set you up for being able to walk into a film where you've had plenty of time to look into everything and prepare. But it also doesn't set out to wag a moral finger or make any grand, sweeping statements. "We Need to Talk About Kevin" leans into that debate, showcasing a resentful mother, a passive father, and a child with an untreated mental illness. Kevin replies that he thought he knew why but now hes not sure anymore. Then she goes home. We find ourselves inside the mind of a woman whose psychopathic son has driven her over the edge. Votes are used to help determine the most interesting content on RYM. The moments of Grace are, as they should be, not in moments like the dinner scene but in the unexpected. Index | The movie we see is her collecting every horrible interaction she ever had with her son and putting it under the umbrella of "things I did," because the only way she can cope with the insanity of what her son did is by fitting it to a narrative where she's responsible. Eva apparently thought her early life was on the right track and tells her screaming baby boy she would frankly rather be back in Paris than changing his diaper. From the beginning, Eva is detached from motherhood. Footsteps approach the tent and a figure walks past. Go. Kevin is far too malevolent, which might work in a Rosemary's Baby horror context, but not here (admittedly it does verge on horror at times but ultimately we are asked to empathise with Eva's travails as a mother). KatyO'Brian (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I got to try some fight choreo, but all in all, yeah, it helped me prepare, I will say I was much more excited to be a good guy instead of a lame, side character, bad guy. and our Each rewatch only feels more rewarding because Ramsay is so pure and gifted a filmmaker she rattles and revises our preconceptions of what a movie and yes, mother too can be. BBC Films There have been a lot of discussions nature vs. nurture, but I've been thinking she was not ok during pregnancy, usually postpartum depression starts after birth. Ironically he becomes a miniature doppelganger of her, all sharp angles and androgynous countenance lying in direct contrast to the lovably rounded and craggy features of his father. In a sonic sleight-of-hand, the joyful cheers alchemise into the sorrowful cries of the families and friends of Kevin's victims. What makes this all worthwhile is the fact that Tilda Swinton is simply an astonishing actress who can bring off anything. The film follows the relationship between a mother and son, Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Kevin (played as a teenager by Ezra Miller and as a child by Jasper Newell) through a pastiche of sequences spanning the course of Kevins first eighteen years. Her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) dismisses her concerns and uproots their bustling city life for a quiet home in the suburbs. Keep your comments focused on the film. I could have sworn that during the first time I watched it there was a scene of Kevin, Franklin and Celia in the garden and it shows how Kevin actually murdered them. this is the best pro-antinatalism PSA out there . A bright light appears outside. On one prison visit, he describes her throwing him at a wall and breaking his arm as "the most honest thing you ever did.". Who's there when Kevin gets sick? Unfortunately, Eva either doesnt know or refuses to know what a more meaningful relationship with her son would look like; thus when their dinner begins with her asking him how school is going, Kevin immediately shuts her down, offering up a clichd mother/son dialogue full of rote questions and deadened responses. She's like a fish out of water. The most plausible answer is that Kevin killed the family to hurt his mother. His son is who Franklin says he is, and anything else is just invisible. Finally. What is lupus, an autoimmune disease diagnosed in Selena Gomez causing her weight gain? Eva takes incessant trips down memory lane to cope with her past loss. The result is that Franklin completely deprives Kevin of proper care - not only mental healthcare, but any other kind of care. So to sum up, Eva systematically deprived Kevin of maternal love, then trained him to accept disgust and fear in its place. Eva's point of view is obviously not reliable, and her segments are intended to portray that she's entered a cycle of deep self-abuse over having raised a psychopath. Helmed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay based on the Orange Prize-winning eponymous 2003 novel by Lionel Shriver, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' is a jarring, erratic, and sometimes profoundly disturbing 2011 psychological thriller that creates an uncanny place in the viewer's mind. It's why vandals paint Evas house in red, and neighbours take out their anger on her. The woman sits up in alarm and shakes the MAN. He answers, I used to think I knew why, and now Im not so sure. This small act of hesitant humility is followed by Kevins embrace of his mother which can only be likened to the embrace received by that infamous scriptural progeny upon his arrival home. He is loving and affectionate with his father, Franklin (John C. Reilly), and has a way of making it clear that it's a deliberate charade designed only to hurt Eva. ROHAN: Was there anything major cut that you remember shooting? The murder spree began with his father and sister suffering the same fate earlier that day. Or did Kevin turned this way because she messed him up from the very birth. Eva repeatedly tries and fails to create a bond with her son according to traditional societal expectations. There are several red flags in the movie that indicates Kevins volatile dispositions, but an accurate diagnosis is not possible. For example, sociopaths are more erratic, and they dont make drastic decisions such as Kevins. However, the story's unflinching refusal to provide answers for who was responsible carries over. The ending of the film leaves Eva's fate up in the air. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) photos, including production stills, premiere photos and other event photos, publicity photos, behind-the-scenes, and more. Sometimes Zuzus petals are all you have to hold onto. For instance, the ball game Eva plays with a toddler Kevin: when Kevin successfully rolls the ball back to her, her praise is strained and brittle. Don't comment just to troll/provoke. ET. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver plays with the deepest fears of the majority of people. Those trucks have the new UPS logo, where if the time-frame is correct, the trucks would have had the old logo of a stringed parcel above the UPS Shield. Eva is entirely bound by the expectations of a culture that fetishizes the mommy and insists upon a particular quality and dynamic in order for relationships to be healthy and normative. I'd be happy to see what they come up with, but, they have more of the understanding of the wildness of the world that they're building. The most cynical, nihilistic, misanthropic films ever made. She has something of an answer as to why Kevin committed such terrors, but where does that leave her? The light outside disappears. The story goes back to the past to recreate the events that led Eva to her present discontent. For full Oscars coverage and commentary by its reviewer, Fr. Directed by Lynne Ramsay, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is fragments of time, jagged and confusing, lurching around inside her mind. If you look one level deeper it's clear that Kevin was deeply and horribly emotionally abused by both of his parents, and in a genuinely loving family he would not have turned out the way he did. Is her husband as zoned out as he seems or is that only her perception? But recent years have shown horror films can write mothers full of contradictions that challenge the status quo. The film ends with the emotionally blank mother visiting her son on the second anniversary of his crimes, just before he's transferred to an adult prison. If this were an act of self-penance it might make sense, but there's no real sense Eva is doing it out of guilt either. We cling to guidelines like the length of Tilda Swinton 's hair to figure out where we are. He hates Eva for a plethora of reasons her neglect, her coldness towards Kevin, and Franklins misguided overcompensation for the lack of Evas love. However, she created a pattern whereby she only expresses herself to Kevin through disgust and fear. So, me, I'm surrounded by comedy, and I have to bring the reality of what's going on. It is true that there is nothing unusual about giving birth to children in order . Also read:Author Lionel Shriver on her early writing, politics, essential reading list and persevering out of 'sheer spite'. We see her birthing of him as rather fraught and his incessant crying drives her nearly mad. KATY: We had this whole scene where we're all cheering at the end kind of thing. Left to pick up the pieces is his mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton). Last March, Bruce Willis family said his aphasia had affected his cognitive abilities. Eve disobeyed, she ate the apple and she was punished by becoming not only human but also a mother. Selena Gomez recently opened up on how the autoimmune condition is affecting her weight due to water retention from all the medication in her recent Tik-Tok live stream. If you are having trouble tying loose ends, let us assist you in the process. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined. Rated R Art and Divine Beauty: An Antidote to the Winter Blues, The Prodigal Son: How to Overcome the 3 Lies We Tell Ourselves. Instead, maternal ambivalence is coded as horror. Kevin grows up to be ever more distant. The flaws of this largely overwrought story belong not so much to Ramsay as filmmaker as to Shriver's source novel. She asks Kevin why he didn't kill her. This is also true of Eva, but we see the conflict in her about her son's mental state. Directed by: Lynne Ramsay. Eva goes into postpartum depression, and her menacing and antisocial kid Kevin only aggravates her ailment. She makes one feel her strung to the breaking point tension in scene after scene. I bring what is actually happening and the severity of what's actually happening to level out, I guess, this part of the movie, because on the other side, you got Kang and Janet are being very, very serious too on that side of things. For much of the film, she lives with her husband, son and daughter in an expensive suburban home, and when we realize they've lived there for several years, we begin to wonder, how can four people occupy a home for over a decade and not accumulate anything? Franklin, on the other hand, does not give him a path to honest interactions. The truth to motherhood is a harsh one. Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Nothing makes sense. Eva rushes to the school to see Kevin getting arrested. When asked about the film adaptation in an interview with The Guardian, Shriver said her biggest concern was if they'd be able to "capture the quality of the slightly unreliable narrator and the ambiguity over who is to blame. The Ending Of We Need To Talk About Kevin Explained. This cycle is beautifully written and acted by Swinton, so much that you can't help but empathize with her despite her own assurances that every drop of blood her son ever spilt is on her hands, an image weaved throughout the movie. The opening shot fades to white, before cutting to a sea of red in the next sequence, foreshadowing the bloodshed to come. This in turn completely undermines the husband/wife dynamic. For the first portion of the film, the leaps back and forth in time caused needless confusion. Now I'm not so sure." Would any interference have prevented him from becoming a killer? Directed by Lynne Ramsey One day, Celia loses one of her eyes from toxic cleaning supplies, and Kevin becomes a prime suspect. So, his dressing sense is perhaps not an indictment of his bitterness. If she had her way, she would put her life on rewind and start all over again maybe even as somebody else, since she's not very fond of herself. The colour red is a recurring motif in the film. Near the top of the list of the worst movies to watch on Mother's Day is "We Need to Talk About Kevin." The Bad Mother refers to oppressive puritans like Margaret White in Carrie. Reilly is typically wonderful in a thankless role, while both juvenile actors evince a low-grade rage that never moves into complete disconnection or full-blown psychosis. All the community rules apply here. And it works - Eva's confrontation was brutally dishonest, but after his reaction she's barely containing her seething rage and the truth of it is all over her face. Does she ever. How would I behave if basically the weight of a literal realm was on my shoulders? So, I think it'd be really, really cool to see if they came up with something else. Eva often looks like she's in a state of shock. He is pursuing a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at Heythrop College in London. So, you kind of draw from that, but then, you also think about just putting yourself in that position too. Will she continue living in their hometown, where she's harassed by locals who blame her for the deaths? Swinton gives an outstanding performance, somehow managing to repeatedly convey implacability and vulnerability in the same moment. Little matters like washing blood red paint off the windows of her diminished home that angry residents have vandalized, become rituals of self-abnegation and penance. 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