We Need To Talk About Kevin
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller
THIS is the most deeply disturbing film you’ll see this year – if you’re up for it.
Perhaps the only recent film to plumb such dark depths of the human soul is “Snowtown.”
Tilda Swinton plays a tortured wreck of a human being, a woman whose spirit has been crushed by some cataclysmic event, to which we are soon introduced.
The movie jumps around a lot. By virtue of a bewildering array of flashbacks and forwards, we learn that her son, the Kevin of the title, has been involved in one of those brutal US school slayings we see so often in the news.
From the opening scenes, the drama is piled on thick – and so is the colour red, used to symbolise the blood of the massacre.
Red clothes, red paint, red everything … the screen drowns in a metaphorical flood of blood.
It’s a tour de force performance from Swinton, whose post-massacre life is like continuously staring into an open wound.
It’s exactly the kind of minimalist, awkward, disjointed from society role she was born to play. There’s no justice if she misses the Oscar for this one.
At the heart of the film is her dysfunctional relationship with son Kevin, and whether this contributes to his acts of madness.
John C. Reilly is perfect as the bewildered husband and father whose life is a sideshow to the two main protagonists.
Ezra Miller, as Kevin, would have stolen the show, if not for the astounding performance of Swinton.
In short, it might be the most important film of the year, but is let down by its over-the-top arthouse pretensions and its fractured format.
– Jason Beck
