We Need to Talk About Kevin

The last months have been phenomenal for British film. First Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, then Tyrannosaur, and now this, the first film from the brilliant writer-director Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher) in seven years; and yes, it was definitely worth the wait.

Ramsay’s touch on the film is clear from the outset. It has her slow and assured style, the occasional poetic flushes, brilliant use of music, a naturalistic tone and an astonishing screenplay that gets right to the heart of Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed novel. Yet this is a very different beast from her previous work, as it tells a very difficult tale about how to make a film about a school kid (Ezra Miller) who butchers his classmates and then smiles for the cameras. The film itself comes in flashbacks from the perspective of his mother Eva (Tilda Swinton), intercut with the trials and tribulations of her present as she desperately tries to make sense of what happened and understand her own guilt. This works beautifully as not only does it present a character’s viewpoint of Kevin’s entire life, but we also get a sense that this is personal memory inevitably distorted by the terrible knowledge of what is to come. Of course the audience’s knowing what Kevin does might be expected to work as a spoiler, but instead only adds tension, brooding darkness and power to the piece as we join our protagonist in attempting to unravel the mystery of simply why.

Of course, to pull off a film like this the leads have to be good, and in this film they are great. Tilda Swinton is always brilliant but here she’s simply magnificent. It’s not the most showy of performances, often it’s quite low key and there were times I genuinely forgot I was watching an actress in a movie. Ezra Miller likewise plays Kevin beautifully as an intelligent, devious and at times seemingly uncaring character, making him both incredibly believable and unknowable, easily becoming one of cinema’s truly terrifying children if simply because of his banality. His father is played by the actor John C. Reilly, who unfortunately is best known for appearances in trashy comedies like Step Brothers despite having given many better performances in better films. Here though he gives a great performance as the caring father who fails to see the darkness in Kevin and believes he has a good relationship with his son, with the tensions between him and his wife clearly palpable. Yet even beyond this, the cast and settings are great and throughout you get the sense of the wider world encroaching, judging, and never letting go.

We Need to Talk About Kevin takes a brilliant but difficult novel and an almost impossible subject matter and creates a phenomenal piece of cinema. It looks straight into the dark recesses of its characters and uncovers guilt, doubt and the banality of evil. A truly remarkable, blistering film that could well prove to be a masterpiece, this demands to be seen and hopefully will not be considered to awkward and uncomfortable when awards season rolls round.

See We Need to Talk About Kevin at York City Screen. For more information visithttp://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/York_Picturehouse/

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