The press notes for the vivid and vexing drama “We Need to Talk About Kevin” — about how a mother relates to a son who commits a murderous crime at his high school — begin with a quote from the poet W.H. Auden: “Evil is unspectacular and always human. And shares our bed and eats at our own table.”
It’s an unnerving and rich quote. It is the kind of observation that urges personal but also communal reflection.
And “We Need to Talk About Kevin” opens today in a city that remains primed, nearly 13 years after the killings at Columbine High School, to grasp new insights about young killers.
If only director Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel had achieved that lofty, vital understanding.
At its best, the movie offers an oft-times impressively composed, highly stylized vision of a penitent parent wallowing.
Shame is the predominant register when something more narratively courageous is called for.
That said, Tilda Swinton gives a fearless turn as Eva Khatchadourian. A successful travel writer, Eva was footloose and adventurous when she met future husband Franklin.
John C. Reilly plays the easygoing guy who will become the aggravatingly clueless father.
They marry, impulsively perhaps. She gets pregnant, not exactly on the itinerary. They have Kevin.
At its most infuriating, the drama delivers an icy title character with little dimension. While this might be an accurate portrait of a psychopath, it thwarts not only empathy but even a measure of recognition.
Kevin is a colicky infant, a quietly hostile, even manipulative, toddler, and a mutedly menacing teen. He is played by three dark-haired, intentionally inscrutable actors.
Ezra Miller portrays the teenage killer. And the filmmakers did a fine job of casting a youngster with a face similar in its unusual beauty to Swinton’s.
Told from Eva’s perspective, this is very much a study in parental identification. Part of Eva’s shame is this painful similarity.
Kevin is nothing like his doting father, nothing like his winsome little sister, Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich). How then did he become this?
Eva is left to tease out the story from stricken recollections. But her suffering and the burdens of motherhood make it hard for her to give us a true picture. Her son in prison, Eva allows herself to be isolated similarly.
Swinton has always been a brave performer, in the uncomfortable material she chooses and the way in which she goes headlong into the work. She is a true independent, drawn to the harsh. And “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is jagged.
Shriver wrote the novel in the wake of Columbine but also other school shootings. But, she has told interviewers, that was the starting point.
The core of the tale is about a woman’s ambivalence toward motherhood. If Eva didn’t take to nurturing Kevin, is she guilty of his crimes? It would be easier to know this were Kevin not depicted from the start as utterly alien emotionally.
Ramsay and co-writer Rory Stewart Kinnear (her husband) have landed the movie in the worst place possible for those of us who come to “We Need to Talk About Kevin” looking for answers, or just deeper questions, about kids who commit murder and the parents who raised them. In many ways the unspeakable meets the unspoken here. The film swings between a bad seed and a bad mother.
Neither is fully satisfying.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN”
Directed by Lynne Ramsay. Written by Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear. Based on Lionel Shriver’s novel. Photography by Seamus McGarvey. Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller. Rated R. 1 hour and 52 minutes. At the Esquire Theatre
