We need to talk about Kevin

There are movie critics who say it’s not fair to evaluate or judge a movie after they've read the book on which it’s based on. They say it messes their judgment as they naturally tend to compare both and invariably the outcome of such comparison would be: “Nah, the book was better”

Having said this, I am going to analyse a movie I've just seen and shortly after I read the book. I’m talking about “We need to talk about Kevin”, based on the bestselling novel of the same name written by Lionel Shriver.

Right off the bat I have to say I enjoyed the book. I found it to be bit heavy to digest during the first few chapters, and had trouble dealing with Shriver’s prolific command of the English language which led to lengthy descriptions of characters and situations. But this is not demeaning of the book at all. It’s just that she took the time to carefully develop the main characters, in particular Eva and Kevin, and their complicated mother-son relationship.

After reading the book, I was really eager to see the movie. I guess most people are. But in my case, I was really curious about how in hell the director was going to bring to the screen a book that is written in letters from Eva to his husband Franklin. But from the opening scene, you can tell this isn't an ordinary movie.

The director, Lynne Ramsay, is a little known Scottish filmmaker for whom this is her first major feature film. She lets us know, from the very beginning, that this is not going to be an easy movie to watch. Ramsay employed a narrative technique where the story is told in two and sometimes three different times, and the viewer has to compose them into a coherent sequence. Eva is portrayed with a shorter and neater haircut and fashion clothing in her entrepreneur younger years, when she had an idyllic relationship with her husband Franklin and a thriving travel books company. When older, after the “incident”, Eva is shown with a badly styled and disheveled haircut along with baggy clothes, maybe second hand. We can even detect that, as she begins to comprehend the complicated nature of her son, she stops dressing in designer clothes and cares little about her own appearance.

Once we grasp that we have to build the story from scratch putting together past and present, we start to notice the magnificent job Tilda Swinton does as Eva Katchadurian. Through her facial expressions and body language she manages to transmit to the viewer the despair of a mother who struggles to deal with a problematic child who challenges her in every possible way. Meanwhile, the father is oblivious to all of this and is reluctant to see the evil behind his beloved son. Ezra Miller couldn't have been cast any better as the troubled Kevin. This up and coming new actor has penetrating eyes which alert the viewer to the enormous evil that resides in him, but doesn't give it away that easily. Through several actions, he tells his mother that he hates her. He is even reluctant to learn to go to the toilet by himself and stays in diapers until he’s six or seven years of age, just to annoy and challenge his mother.

Several of Kevin’s actions in the book are left out of the script for practical reasons. I figure you would need between 8 to 10 hours of continuous reading to finish the book whereas the movie only lasts little over two hours. This makes you realise how hard it is to convert a novel into a movie without losing its intent. And I think Ramsay was able to pull it off by her smart way of telling the story as well as the fantastic casting of Eva and Kevin. Even John C. Reilly was terrific as Franklin. OK, I admit this isn't a complicated character to play, but he really embodies the playful and unsuspecting father who is reluctant to concede that his only son is troubled and blames everything on Eva.

Ironically, when the movie reaches its climax, which we anticipated from the very beginning but didn't know exactly what it was going to be, Kevin chooses to sacrifice his father along with his sister. His father, who was so complacent and loving and totally unaware of any of Kevin’s wrongdoings. It seems like Kevin, by antagonising his mother since he was born, created a bond with her. A wicked bond that is but one that Kevin, in his own twisted way, respected. But he despised his father and his little sister Celia, who loved him dearly as well.

I've always loved powerful movies. And I’m not talking about car-chase-powerful, bomb-blast-powerful or blood-and-gore-powerful. I’m talking about movies which tell a powerful story that gets into our skin and we can’t stop thinking about it for days. Movies that make you want to dissect them as if it were a frog in a high school science lab.

This is one of them, at least in my personal opinion. But I could be wrong.