I had been looking forward to this movie. Many film critics raved about it, and it stars Tilda Swinton who had some role in getting the movie made. Tilda is a great actress and only appears in outstanding movies, right? The subject sounded fascinating: parents desperately try to compensate for the sociopathic behavior of a child who grows up to do something terrible. It is a great crucible for a story, and gives us a chance to peer into the mind of such a person. It's a story that, properly told, should bring tears to any parent's eye.
Sadly this movie was a major disappointment.
It wasn't just bad. It was boring. The first half drags.
Writer/Director Lynne Ramsay has this annoying habit of jumping between different time-lines, but the jumps are unconnected. This is not just confusing, but she kept repeating the same scenes laboring the same points. It became tedious. I think Ramsay is trying to be arty, but art is supposed to convey feeling. Instead this was boring and incoherent.
After dragging through the first half the movie finally progresses, but never lives up to its title. The parents never do "talk about Kevin". Apart from checking his hearing as a toddler, they never seek medical or psychological help, or talk to a social worker. We never see a single teacher who, over ten years, you think might have noticed something. Relatives or friends who might comment on his behavior (and could provide a better narrative than Tilda merely looking stone-faced) are completely absent in this movie. Yes, despite Eva (Tilda's character) being a travel author and adventurer she somehow has no friends. And even when Kevin pours caustic soda in his sister's eye and sticks the family pet down the waste disposal unit the parents still don't seek help. No family is this stupid, particularly when the safety of another sibling is at stake.
Books that sell tend to have solid stories, so movies adapted from them don't have a problem with plot holes. Ramsay instead omitted many of the book's explanations and introduced the plot holes on her own accord:
She has the townspeople vilifying Eva to the point she can't walk down the street without being slapped. But Eva lost her husband and daughter too. I don't think an entire town would be that heartless. If everyone hates her and she is that miserable there, then why doesn't she just move? She goes from being a wealthy author in a huge house to living in a miserable shack with a menial job. Why? There is no explanation. I've assumed for this review that Kevin is a sociopath, but you wouldn't know from the movie because they never go anywhere near these subjects.
Ramsay appears to be squeamish or chose not to sensationalize the violence, because there is very little blood and almost no violence. Those scenes where something does happen are so heavily edited you might not even realize it. The school massacre at the end of the movie is so heavily edited it looks like Kevin is standing in an empty stadium shooting arrows into thin air. At the end she finally does show Kevin's father and sister dead, at which point I wondered why she edited the earlier violence to the point of incoherence.
If you are making a movie about violence, then be prepared to show it. If for whatever reason you choose not to, then at least don't include the violent scenes with the violence cropped out of it. People either look, or they look away. If they look, they look at what is going on. By trying to do neither Ramsay's result simply ends up looking like bad camera-work; like a wildlife documentary not filming the lion but the patch of grass 30 feet to the right of them.
The book apparently gives a lot of background which Ramsay left out. In the book Eva resents baby Kevin for bringing an end to her adventurous lifestyle, but the movie only hints at this. (The truth is this happens to all parents, and we deal with it.) Likewise that baby Kevin's constant crying shows there something is wrong with him. (Again, this affects all parents. Again, we deal with it.) Why doesn't Eva ever talk to her mother, who is supposedly just a phone call away? These sort of errors make me wonder if Ramsay has any children of her own, or consulted parents when she was writing the movie.
Some have praised the acting, but I wouldn't. Tilda, usually a great actress, wears the same stone-faced expression. Ezra Miller looks mean and sneers, but it would be unfair to blame the actors because they are given nothing to work with. I'm not sure if John C. Reilly is necessarily miscast as Eva's husband, but there is no chemistry between Tilda and he.
Except for the minor role of Kevin's sister, the characters in this movie do so many stupid things it is impossible to empathize with them.
This film is a missed opportunity. It had good source material, a great actress and an intriguing concept. Ramsay should have spent more time on the story and less time choosing out-of-place songs to play over Ms. Swinton's driving scenes.
This movie's fatal shortcoming isn't that it is bad, because even bad movies can be entertaining. It's problem is that it is boring. Special credit to film critic Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle who called this movie for the bore it is. Most other movie critics were taken in by it and praised it as art.
Sadly this movie was a major disappointment.
It wasn't just bad. It was boring. The first half drags.
Writer/Director Lynne Ramsay has this annoying habit of jumping between different time-lines, but the jumps are unconnected. This is not just confusing, but she kept repeating the same scenes laboring the same points. It became tedious. I think Ramsay is trying to be arty, but art is supposed to convey feeling. Instead this was boring and incoherent.
After dragging through the first half the movie finally progresses, but never lives up to its title. The parents never do "talk about Kevin". Apart from checking his hearing as a toddler, they never seek medical or psychological help, or talk to a social worker. We never see a single teacher who, over ten years, you think might have noticed something. Relatives or friends who might comment on his behavior (and could provide a better narrative than Tilda merely looking stone-faced) are completely absent in this movie. Yes, despite Eva (Tilda's character) being a travel author and adventurer she somehow has no friends. And even when Kevin pours caustic soda in his sister's eye and sticks the family pet down the waste disposal unit the parents still don't seek help. No family is this stupid, particularly when the safety of another sibling is at stake.
Books that sell tend to have solid stories, so movies adapted from them don't have a problem with plot holes. Ramsay instead omitted many of the book's explanations and introduced the plot holes on her own accord:
She has the townspeople vilifying Eva to the point she can't walk down the street without being slapped. But Eva lost her husband and daughter too. I don't think an entire town would be that heartless. If everyone hates her and she is that miserable there, then why doesn't she just move? She goes from being a wealthy author in a huge house to living in a miserable shack with a menial job. Why? There is no explanation. I've assumed for this review that Kevin is a sociopath, but you wouldn't know from the movie because they never go anywhere near these subjects.
Ramsay appears to be squeamish or chose not to sensationalize the violence, because there is very little blood and almost no violence. Those scenes where something does happen are so heavily edited you might not even realize it. The school massacre at the end of the movie is so heavily edited it looks like Kevin is standing in an empty stadium shooting arrows into thin air. At the end she finally does show Kevin's father and sister dead, at which point I wondered why she edited the earlier violence to the point of incoherence.
If you are making a movie about violence, then be prepared to show it. If for whatever reason you choose not to, then at least don't include the violent scenes with the violence cropped out of it. People either look, or they look away. If they look, they look at what is going on. By trying to do neither Ramsay's result simply ends up looking like bad camera-work; like a wildlife documentary not filming the lion but the patch of grass 30 feet to the right of them.
The book apparently gives a lot of background which Ramsay left out. In the book Eva resents baby Kevin for bringing an end to her adventurous lifestyle, but the movie only hints at this. (The truth is this happens to all parents, and we deal with it.) Likewise that baby Kevin's constant crying shows there something is wrong with him. (Again, this affects all parents. Again, we deal with it.) Why doesn't Eva ever talk to her mother, who is supposedly just a phone call away? These sort of errors make me wonder if Ramsay has any children of her own, or consulted parents when she was writing the movie.
Some have praised the acting, but I wouldn't. Tilda, usually a great actress, wears the same stone-faced expression. Ezra Miller looks mean and sneers, but it would be unfair to blame the actors because they are given nothing to work with. I'm not sure if John C. Reilly is necessarily miscast as Eva's husband, but there is no chemistry between Tilda and he.
Except for the minor role of Kevin's sister, the characters in this movie do so many stupid things it is impossible to empathize with them.
This film is a missed opportunity. It had good source material, a great actress and an intriguing concept. Ramsay should have spent more time on the story and less time choosing out-of-place songs to play over Ms. Swinton's driving scenes.
This movie's fatal shortcoming isn't that it is bad, because even bad movies can be entertaining. It's problem is that it is boring. Special credit to film critic Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle who called this movie for the bore it is. Most other movie critics were taken in by it and praised it as art.