We Need to Talk About Kevin

 Hallucinogenic scenes bathed in red, juxtaposed with an actual red-paint-splashed house, introduce us to a woman on the edge, a woman using pills and sleep in an attempt to sand off her interior pain the way she sands off the paint thrown against the stucco walls of her home.

                                                                                                                

We’ve just met Eva and we’ve no context, no clue on what’s happening.      

 Next we see her dressed professionally, getting into an old station wagon, also splashed with red paint, having what appears to be a job interview.  From the interviewer’s cryptic comment we assume there’s something important in Eva’s background, something she’s done, but she’ll be hired anyway, “as long as you can type and file.”  

 As Eva returns to her car, two women approach, one a 40-ish woman, her arm linked into a frail, elderly one’s -- her mother’s we assume.  As they move closer to Eva the younger woman says, “You’re smiling, are you?”  Then - now close - she raises her arm and slaps Eva viciously across the face, shouting, “I hope you rot in hell!”  

Eva remains there, unmoving, expressionless, without reaction, seemingly unaffected as though she’s operating in some parallel universe.  (Or, does she believe she’s deserved what just happened and accepts it stoically?)  The two women continue down the sidewalk, one’s arm through the other’s, supporting, protecting.

  

Thus begins We Need to Talk About Kevin:  harrowing and stunning, both in story and in perceptive, brutal honesty. 

 It reverses narrative so that a traumatizing, climactic event doesn’t overwhelm or permit oversimplification.                                 

                                            

My son characterized this film, from what he’d read, as impressionistic and non-linear with aspects of fantasy and horror.  He was right, and it’s exactly those perfectly applied elements that make it riveting, powerful and gut-wrenching. Sadly, they’ll also limit its audience.  So will its unusual camera angles and juxtaposition of past and present.

The film informs rather than entertains.  It took me to a place I’ve wondered about for years, a place that remains one of our last taboos, almost never mentioned or explored, at least not in readily accessible lay literature:  “How do parents of killers, especially youthful ones, cope in the aftermath?”

It’s eerily coincidental that I rented and watched this just before the horrific Colorado movie theatre massacre on Friday, July 20, 2012.  On The View a few days later (July 23rd), lawyer/journalist Chris Cuomo stated the 24-year-old shooter’s mother, who works in the mental health field, knew her son had psychiatric problems but was powerless to intervene or force treatment.  He was/is an adult, no longer subject to a mother’s control.  How sadly true of our mental health system and laws which protect civil liberties without providing adequate mechanism for preemptive intervention.  Mental health professionals can force it, but too often, too late.  

Strangely enough, I don’t recall hearing, “We need to talk about Kevin.” in the film.  Perhaps its absence symbolized the widening gulf of distance and denial that grew between Kevin’s father, Franklin (John C. Reilly), and his mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton).   Teenage Kevin was played believably, brilliantly, with quiet malevolence by Ezra Miller. Toddler Kevin was played by Rock Duer, and Kevin from ages 6-8 was played by Jasper Newell, whose performance disturbed me most.     

Nothing in the film is over the top; its effectiveness is in witnessing Kevin’s behaviour within a quiet, realistic depiction of everyday life, year after year.  Our sense of foreboding increases with Eva’s, though she never imagines the horror to come.

I’ll be honest here.  I’ve waited days before writing this.  I was emotionally overwhelmed and needed time to decompress and reflect.

There’s much I admire about this film: its courage in tackling the subject; its style, which will conversely keep many away; its sophistication in believing audiences will hang in and ultimately understand; its spare but effective use of music and impressionistic images; and finally, that it’s not overtly set in any country; it can be anywhere, anytime.  It’s a BBC production, yet it wasn’t until a near-final scene that I noticed an American flag decal near the rear window of a police car, signifying it was set somewhere in the U.S.  Until that moment, I believed it was set in England, given its tone and style.  It doesn’t involve guns.

It takes us on a mother’s bewildered, terrified parental journey through the progression and aftermath of a horrific event.  We journey with her, witness her tormented, lonely psyche as she sees, loves and cares for a son whose behaviour has been difficult from birth, and which only grows worse with the years.  He cries incessantly as an infant, so much so that we see her standing beside a jackhammering worker, just to drown out the crying for a short time.  Kevin is adept at tailoring his behaviour, so a doctor dismisses Eva’s concern. Kevin defiantly refuses to toilet train by age four, is willfully, purposefully and selectively destructive, secretly cruel, killing a family pet and blinding his sister in one eye, though all deviously without obvious proof.  He bears his mother a virulent animosity and plays mother against father with the finesse of a champion chess player.  Typical of Brit-quality cinema, none of this is graphic.  

As the years pass, Eva, a pre-marriage adventurer and author, becomes more and more isolated in her singular understanding of what she sees and knows of her first-born.  She loves him despite, and struggles with guilt and anger that only a mother understands.  Her loving, close marriage fades away as husband denies, then proposes simplistic reasons and solutions, ultimately questions her maternal instincts, then her sanity, and finally bails. 

At pivotal points, two background music selections made powerful, thematic impacts.  The first is Buddy Holly’s charming 1957 release, Everyday.  For anyone unfamiliar, here’s a YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMezwtB1oCU

The second is In My Room, released in 1964 by The Beach Boys

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQT-GjKlLw

Brave, important points:

• In showing that Kevin was difficult from birth, it suggests genes and biology play a role in disturbed behaviour, that nurturing isn’t the singular or paramount determinant --still a controversial, debated issue within the mental health field.

• Because of the above and society’s need to scapegoat, blame, and understandably find reason for the incomprehensible, many blame parents.  This film illustrates it powerfully.

• Some children are difficult, even mean and cruel.  Children come with personalities, certain traits we parents can try to shape or modify, but we don’t always succeed.  We don’t want to admit it, choosing instead to believe the more comforting, appealing myth that all children are angelic and that something dreadful must have happened to cause antisocial behaviour.  Often it has, but not always.

The latter feeds into parental soul-searching if and when negative, possibly even cruel and destructive behaviour is noted in a child.  Am I over-reacting?  How can I think this about my own child?  and the kicker is a mate who says, “Oh for God’s sake, he/she’s just being a kid!”  or “I think YOU have the problem, he/she’s just bored,” or as Kevin’s father said, “It’s living in the city, we’ll move to the country.”

Additional pain comes when a parent or parents muster up enough courage to admit there’s a problem, reach out and seek help from an idealized mental health system, only to find it underfunded, understaffed, overwhelmed, sometimes lacking in competence, and sometimes unsympathetic, casting total blame on parenting style.

Adrift in much of the above, movie-mother Eva soldiered on to a horrific movie denouement that changes lives forever.  Surprisingly, and again bravely depicted, least affected is Kevin. 

"There but for the grace of God go I” should run through any parent’s mind as the credits roll.  

This film has much to show and teach us.

March 10, 2014 Postscript
The New Yorker has published an 8-page article on Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who killed his mother, 26 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and eventually himself on December 14, 2012.  The piece is based on extensive interviews with Lanza's father and gives the reader a glimpse into how he copes with the impossible.  Here is the link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon