Chicago – Many critics failed to take Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” seriously, dismissing it as an art house retread of “The Omen.” Such a simplistic label fails to take into account the film’s carefully textured portrait of a deeply fractured mother-son relationship. Though the film takes its premise to melodramatic extremes, it does harbor considerable insight into the repercussions of a disconnect between parent and child.
Eva (Tilda Swinton) is the sort of mother who causes strangers to wince while passing her in the supermarket. She can barely contain the intense dislike that she feels for her child. Motherhood is a form of entrapment in her eyes, and her attempts to care for her young son lack any sense of genuine compassion. When she snaps on a hollow smile to calm her crying son, the moment is both chilling and darkly funny. It only gets...
Eva (Tilda Swinton) is the sort of mother who causes strangers to wince while passing her in the supermarket. She can barely contain the intense dislike that she feels for her child. Motherhood is a form of entrapment in her eyes, and her attempts to care for her young son lack any sense of genuine compassion. When she snaps on a hollow smile to calm her crying son, the moment is both chilling and darkly funny. It only gets...
- 6/1/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
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Quite deliberately, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) provokes discussion. Why is Kevin evil? Was he born that way? Did his mother make him that way by withholding love? Is he a manifestation of his mother’s own hatred toward humanity? Questions one could argue that director Lynne Ramsay and screenwriter Rory Kinnear (adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel) never intended their audience to be able to answer satisfactorily.
To describe the film as ‘arty’ would be doing everyone involved a disservice, but there is no getting away from its obvious stylisation. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Judy Becker and costume designer Catherine George deserve credit for combing their talents to form a cohesive palette which incorporates flashes, splashes and swathes of deep red. Incidentally, Lynne Ramsay...
Quite deliberately, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) provokes discussion. Why is Kevin evil? Was he born that way? Did his mother make him that way by withholding love? Is he a manifestation of his mother’s own hatred toward humanity? Questions one could argue that director Lynne Ramsay and screenwriter Rory Kinnear (adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel) never intended their audience to be able to answer satisfactorily.
To describe the film as ‘arty’ would be doing everyone involved a disservice, but there is no getting away from its obvious stylisation. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, production designer Judy Becker and costume designer Catherine George deserve credit for combing their talents to form a cohesive palette which incorporates flashes, splashes and swathes of deep red. Incidentally, Lynne Ramsay...
- 2/27/2012
- by Chris Laverty
- Clothes on Film
We Need To Talk About Kevin was originally reviewed during the 2011 Stella Artois 20th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival
Imagine yourself as a parent. Now, aside from outliving your own child, imagine the worst thing that could happen. Despite all your best efforts to be a good parent, to raise your child properly, imagine your child does something horrific and unforgivable. Imagine they have done something that turns the entire community against you. Now you are as prepared as you possibly can be for watching We Need To Talk About Kevin, from Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, whose previous two feature films are Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002) and both films are extraordinary. We Need To Talk About Kevin is the third feature film written and directed by this exciting new cinematic voice. This also happens to be her darkest film, and perhaps her best film to date.
Tilda Swinton plays Eva,...
Imagine yourself as a parent. Now, aside from outliving your own child, imagine the worst thing that could happen. Despite all your best efforts to be a good parent, to raise your child properly, imagine your child does something horrific and unforgivable. Imagine they have done something that turns the entire community against you. Now you are as prepared as you possibly can be for watching We Need To Talk About Kevin, from Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, whose previous two feature films are Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002) and both films are extraordinary. We Need To Talk About Kevin is the third feature film written and directed by this exciting new cinematic voice. This also happens to be her darkest film, and perhaps her best film to date.
Tilda Swinton plays Eva,...
- 2/9/2012
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Imagine yourself as a parent. Now, aside from outliving your own child, imagine the worst thing that could happen. Despite all your best efforts to be a good parent, to raise your child properly, imagine your child does something horrific and unforgivable. Imagine they have done something that turns the entire community against you. Now you are as prepared as you possibly can be for watching We Need To Talk About Kevin, from Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, whose previous two feature films are Ratcatcher (1999) and Morvern Callar (2002) and both films are extraordinary. We Need To Talk About Kevin is the third feature film written and directed by this exciting new cinematic voice. This also happens to be her darkest film, and perhaps her best film to date.
Tilda Swinton plays Eva, a worldly free-spirited woman who suddenly finds herself settled down with her husband Franklin, played by John C. Reilly,...
Tilda Swinton plays Eva, a worldly free-spirited woman who suddenly finds herself settled down with her husband Franklin, played by John C. Reilly,...
- 11/15/2011
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
This is an exclusive interview with Lynne Ramsey and Ezra Miller for We Need to Talk About Kevin which is screening at London Film Festival. The film also stars Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Siobhan Fallon, Ursula Parker and Ashley Gerasimovich. Interview by screenwriter and director Dr. Garth Twa. Lynne Ramsey’s new film, We Need To Talk About Kevin, based on the novel by Lionel Shriver, is a stunning movie, near flawless despite it’s tiny budget (‘We were trying to make a film in America with UK money’ says Ramsey). The story of mother who sees her that something is going very wrong with her son, but is unequipped to do anything about it, is pitch perfect, from the performances of Tilda Swinton as Eva (a perfect role for her singular talent), Ezra Miller as the older Kevin (chilling and perhaps the most nuanced psychopath in film history) and,...
- 10/20/2011
- by Dr. Garth Twa
- Pure Movies
Reviewed by Aaron Hillis
(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)
Directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich
Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.
Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...
(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)
Directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich
Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.
Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...
- 5/16/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Network
Reviewed by Aaron Hillis
(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)
Directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich
Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.
Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...
(from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival)
Directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Written by: Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear
Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich
Only slightly more prolific than fellow cinematic impressionist and Cannes competitor Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay’s third film in a dozen years (following 1999′s “Ratcatcher” and 2002′s “Morvern Callar”) is worth the wait and, indeed, a marvelous and moving work of art we need to talk about. Sustaining a disorienting rigor without losing its emotional focus, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” radically transforms the first-person storytelling of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed 2003 bestseller — about a mother’s grief, guilt and ostracism after her teenage son orchestrates a high-school massacre — into a phantasmagoric tone poem and booby-trapped bad-seed drama.
Always remarkable but here a revelation, Tilda Swinton wears no monster makeup to play a zombie named Eva — that is,...
- 5/16/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Magazine
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