We Need to Talk About Kevin: When Is Evil Born?

Title: We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Director: Lynne Ramsay.

Cast: Tilda Swinton, John. C Reilly and Ezra Miller.

Country: UK, USA.

Year: 2011

In a society were violence can sometimes be glorified and sometimes hated, it is only natural that art will try to explore and explain its essence. We have seen it countless times in many different forms, movies being the pioneers in making violence visual. “We Need to Talk About Kevin“ could easily be included as a movie that tries to seek what moves a person to be so intensely driven towards violence.

Originally a book, “We Need to Talk About Kevin“ tells the story of Eva (Tilda Swinton), a woman that gets pregnant with her firstborn, Kevin (played in his teenage years by Ezra Miller). As a child, Kevin begins to display strange and violent behavior that grows exponentially until it gets out of control.

Tilda Swinton owns the movie; her portrayal of a reluctant mother is spot on and she manages to say more with her body language than with her words. Ezra Miller manages to do a good job, with what I felt was a clichéd character. But the casting of Kevin at different ages was impressive. John. C Reilly was underused with a very lukewarm character, for once he remained in the shadows instead of being a scene-stealer.

As I already established, violence is the main theme in the movie and yet there is never a moment where we see a violent act explicitly. Still, the film manages to create the uncomfortable curiosity of watching something you are afraid of. The raw cinematic language Ramsay uses accomplishes this, specifically the color scheme. The color red is essentially another character in this movie; it is the blood we never get to see, the life in Eva. To contrast with Eva we have blue, it’s Kevin’s color, cold and serious. These two clash visually, as do mother and son.

The problems start with the constant change of pacing in the movie. First, we get snippets, fast cuts and a lot of movement, like pieces of a puzzle you have to put together as member of the audience. Then, this is lost to a more traditional flashback/flash-forward movie. It made me disengage emotionally at some point in the middle.

Even though it has a very promising start, at then end it becomes a very flat movie. There is not a theme; things happen, but they don’t have a real base or reason. The author tries to take on a very large subject leaving some of the most interesting parts missing entirely. We lose the interesting stuff – a mother dealing with the evilness of her own flesh- to the already seen stuff – a kid making life hell to his mom-.

All of the hectic and impressive build-up falls into a predictable ending with no real purpose. It seems to me that they used the easy way to show this face of violence and it is disappointing.

So, what is this movie trying to tell me? That evil can be born in a healthy environment? That some human beings are biologically flawed? Or that there are some things that, simply, we will never understand?