I try really hard to focus my limited writing on things that bring me joy. But every now and then, I encounter a film that enrages me to the point where I need to expunge myself of it. This film had me seeing red. (And if you've seen the film, you'll know that that was a joke about as shallow [groan-inducing] as the movie that inspired it) [open with an example of the director doubling down on bad symbology of signage -- the ESCAPE sign and the AWAITS (because she's waiting y'know)] [transition into browbeating of the colors all the way back in the opening] it builds in primary colors because the director wants you to notice. But these images are simplistic, each scene being exactly what it is prescribed to be, and no subtext. Compare the primary colors to children's building blox in their simplicity and ability to grab attention The only other movie that I can think of that was as labored in its direction was THE KING'S SPEECH (also awful). Both movies had me constantly saying to myself, "I don't know what this film is trying to do, but whatever it is it certainly isn't working." fussy direction The film doesn't have any actual characters. In all his incarnations, Kevin is a blank expression or the facade of a happy-go-lucky kid (only the baby who unwittingly played infant Kevin truly conveyed anything that might be considered a performance). Franklin is John C. Reilly without the acting apparently hired only for his appearance alone, his doughy humanism providing contrast to the uncanny valley of Swinton's android-like features. Eva is only there as a coat hanger for the events that ocurr in each scene (I can't bring myself to call it a plot, because every scene exists for its own sake only). From there we also have: ...but wait there's more! And let us not forget Kevin. Fractured with purpose? Hardly. See The Headless Woman for a recent example of how to pull that off. potential for comedy: the stroller, the relgious solicitors country songs that populate the film in order to fill the empty space with noise. Or Buddy Holly's "Everyday" whose lyrics and music box melody are so pointed when matched up to the story of the mommy-hating Kevin that the song's complexity is lost on its simplistic use in the film. Any film that attempts to turn the shy naiveté of virginal youth from Buddy Holly's sly "Everyday" into a cloying statement about its protagonist's motherly desires is trying way too hard. Like Vertigo's "Scene d'Amour" in The Artist, it's an example of a filmmaker using the emotional resonance from an existing piece of great art to enhance their own work only to have it put a bigger spotlight on the failings. She didn't create him: She snarks at him when he's about 2 or 3. She smacks him when he's about 5 or 6. yellow too. this movie only paints in primary colors. broad strokes that make a big splash while failing to define making excuses, and filling in blanks for a film that never gets there on its own each shot a painfully labored child of its director to call this fractured narrative a reflection of Eva's mindset [psyche] is analysis by process of elimination. If it isn't anything else, than it must be fragemtned like her. But such analysis excuses Ramsey for poo execution. It's the type of analytical copout that could be used to excuse any bad art [to elevate any for of bad art] to the rhelm of the worthy. of course, a movie doesn't have to explain anything. Some films work in other, more abstract ways to convey whatever it is they are trying to convey (2001, 8 1/2) and to say things like "he's a sweet little boy" or "" Eva is Kevin or some such nonsense. [the egg shells to his fingernails,] The film never really commits to this in the narrative (why, for instance, is her relationship with her daughter perfectly fine? The movie is implying--very lightly--that Eva created Kevin the monster, but never backs it up with much evidence or narrative consistency) Unlike TKS, WNTTAK kept me focused on the screen. This one isn't shot in a way that instructs you to look away, but to invest yourself in each shot. You often find yourself asking a question, like why is everything red? Only the inevitable answer isn't interesting enough to prop up the original question (and director [name] will always provide you with an answer, just you wait... and wait). Whatever was interesting about the shot is nullified by the eventual response. When you find yourself asking quesitons like, "Why doesn't she just paint over the red?" or "Why would she ever cook the broken eggs?" you are officially outside of the movie looking in like a window shopper who hopes to eventually see something interesting that would be worth returning to later. music [songs] that has no purpose being there If you were to put the narrative back into chronological order, it would only further reveal the film's aimlessness. As it stands, blendered together for no apparent reason other than to hide its narrative flaws, We Need to Talk About Kevin is left with nowhere to go but round and round. The performance of the teen Kevin is so painful to watch because it is so bland. Instead we are subjected to two hours of Tilda Swinton stewing in an existential hell. She's trapped in a role that she didn't seem to want (the film is elusive here; we don't ever really know who she was or what she wants other than the tiny crumbs that tell us that she didn't want to move to the country, and that she used to be a famous "adventurer" author). Is this a comedy? A brief scene of her standing near a jackhammer to drone out Kevin's screaming made me think it might be, and left me waiting for a continuation of the dark comedy tone (it never came, leaving me wanting). Is this a horror movie? Other critics seem to think so (Glenn Kenny, Andrew O'Hehir [AO Scott too?] describe it that way). But it is neighter scary, morbid, or unsettling. In fact, it is so settled that I found myself waiting for it to stir me, and waiting for shots and scenes to just end already. Oh, that's why this shot was that way. Huh. Some shots were so coreographed that to see their outcome once is to render them useless for any revisting. You will get nothing else out of them. Heavy handed direction had me seeing red. If you've seen the film then you know that that was a joke right there. Kevin using his bow and arrow in a killing spree is such a laughable conclusion that it made me wish that the film had followed through on the dark humor long enough to make this punchline actually resonate as a joke rather than the woefully insipid tour-de-groan that it is. For the record, Tilda Swinton cooking with broken eggs and then spitting out the shells as if they were watermellon seeds was the single stupidest thing I've seen in a movie since all those exposition-laden scenes in Inception. Because nothing is more frightening than low-rise jeans on a teenage boy. Except for skinny jeans. That's what this film needed: a bow and arrow weilding murderer in skinny jeans. Wearing red. The horror. The horror. watching fingernails being bitten off is like watching paint dry--or watching paint being sanded off of walls as Tilda does throughout the movie. And wy, Tilda, why are you not wearing a face mask? Does Tilda Swinton care so little about her repritory health? These are the types of questions that haunted me [burned in side my skull] while watching the film. It isn't horror. Just horrible. He's a born terror, so she hates him. I hate him. In fact, I spent most of the run time wishing that Eva would grow a vagina and bludgeon her brooding little Kevin to death. The film spends its time in the post-massacre world so we never see any more of what is implied: that maybe she contributed to his behavior. She does feel guilt--we get plenty of that--but the film never commits to the implication of her verbal abuse. Lynne Ramsey is trying so hard to make each scene be something that they never amount to much of anything. Mostly that means a whole lot of Kevin staring blankly ant Eva, but every now and then she implies that maybe Eva is to blame for his cold stares. This film wants to smash its jelly sandwhich, and eat it too. There are exactly two laughs in the picture: [jack hammer and religious guys]. But why are they there? Or, better yet, why isn't there more of this? The story of Eva being the "adventurer" and such... squint and you might make it out. The story never really tells it. Every scene is played out like a newspaper comic strip. In panel one, Eva changes big boy Kevin's diaper. Panel two, Kevin immediately and intentionally craps in it. Panel three, Eva throws Kevin against the wall. Panel four, Kevin stares down Eva while holding his broken arm. The reader laughs. Tomorrow, a different event with the same punchline: Kevin stares down Eva. That Kevin eventually goes on a murderous rampage is a narrative necessity because this serielized nonsense was packaged into a movie rather that something more appropriate like a series of webisodes that always end with the Kevin stare-down. [consider making this into a series of comic strips using screenshots! YES! This will be a follow-up post, and will hopefully go a little viral! Make sure to create a cartoon logo, use speech bubbles, and put it into black-bordered panels. Expiriment with making the images posterized instead of just screenshots. My lead-in should say, "As you can see, had these been broken up this way it may have been a great dark comedy instead of the overwrought bullshit it turned out to be."] It begins in a sea of red, then a blanket of red light. Already, the movie is drawing you towards seeing this color so-oppresively applied by its director to nearly every shot so not-so-insightful viewers can note its every appearance ("look, honey, there's another red splatter on the car!"). She is so obsessed with this scarlet application that she loses sight of doing much of anything else in each shot where crimson is employed. Tilda in front of a red car, Tilda in front of a red clown, Tilda in front of a red... fuck-if-I-care. What did I feel? I felt bad for that baby, tormented into screaming into Tilda's face for a shot of... Kevin as a baby screaming into Tilda's face. By the time the film ended, I knew exactly how he felt. more obsessed with the direction of her film than in the film itself. So Eva has lost her life, or something. I'm not really sure. We're not asked to mourn for the loss of anything, really, and we never get any sense of what she herself is mourning. She says that her life used to be better, but [direcotr] never really shows us that. Instead she leaves it up to the viewer to interpret everything that was left up on screen. It's an exhausting experience, and one that never really pays off. But then Ramsay gives the ocassional symbol in the framespace that is redundant to whatever is happening onscreen. She's like the incesant joke-teller who keeps prompting you with "Get it?" when the very fact that they had to ask should be enough to indicate tat there was nothing to get. we spend the duraton of the picture with Eva, and her subjectivity is applied to every scene. Unfortunately, her mind is so numb that to rely on it as a device for storytelling makes for a vapid picture. Cue director, who is more than happy to fill that emty void with painstakingly crafted set dressing and shots designed to blow. Your. Mind. too busy congratulating herself for each shot that she forgot to compose them within the context of an actual film. So ham-fisted that it ends up foreshadowing its foreshadows (before foreshadowing them again). cinematic pap that only exists to feed the masses/hordes. The difference being that so many mainstream films aren't actually trying to be anything other than what they are. WNTTAK is trying. Really hard. It's trying to be not just a movie, but a film. Or at least "a film by." Each shot wants to be considered in isolation. Their only throughline being the color red. Ty Burr: "A shot of Eva hiding in a supermarket aisle, her head surrounded by rows of tomato soup cans, is suitable for framing and nothing more." I must acknowledge Cries & Whispers, a film that I love, because it is also obsessed with the color red. But in that film, the red rooms feel lived in with each character trapped in hell. But We Need to Talk About Kevin has no characters, and its red feels painted on. That Eva spends much of the film trying to remove it is ironic. The red doesn't establish anything so much as it covers. It's a scene-stealing character. So oppressively placed as to constantly compete with whatever else is on screen. She's going to hell? Why? Because she says so in one of the films few pleasurable moments. It's one of the few implications that maybe she's to blame for Kevin being Kevin. but a narrative that is out of order such as this forces the viewer to re-construct it in the mind, taking all of the work off of the director and creating the temporary illusion of creativity/complexity. Yes, this can be done well, and with purpose. But here, it's not just arbitrary, but a method for hiding the narrative flaws--namely it's lack of drive towards anything or a willingness to wallow in the lead character's apparent depression. Instead, it exists between each story (Kevin's childhood and her post-murder existence), and never establishes a consistent tone. There's a great dark comedy in here somewhere. a good artist can use dissonance to create additional meaning, much as the films of Sergei Eisenstein where his "collision" of images creates metaphor. But here, such dissonance is meaningless. It's more of a dumpster dive where one must wade through all forms of mismatched rubble in search of some buried treasure. Several such nuggets exist [transtion into jackhammer, etc] a film that is 50% assembled out of random coverage and second-unit shots of things like rain on windshields and kids in costume. Every shot is just a shot, every scene just a scene, and in the end none of it amounts to much of anything. In one moment she's Christ-like. Later, she's shown as [confused/lost]. As with the rest of the film Ramsay not only refuses to take a stance, but provides controdictory messages and possible meanings. It can be whatever you want, mean whatever you think it means. But really, it's simply vapid and means nothing at all. What else can I say about that opening shot. Well, it does set up the rest of the picture. It features Tilda Swinton wallowing around in a big, sloppy, red mess. Ramsay unknowingly/unwittingly got this opening exactly right. I can think of no better metaphor for the film as a whole.