We Need to Talk About Kevin [Blu-ray]

Director: Lynne Ramsay Lynne Ramsay

Overview

A tormented mother grapples with feelings of accountability and intense grief after her troubled 15-year-old son commits an act of violence that shakes their community to its very core. Eva (Tilda Swinton) had a promising career when an unplanned pregnancy threw her life off-balance, though she selflessly put her own ambitions aside to give her son, Kevin, a good life. From the moment Kevin was born, there was a palpable tension between mother and son. Years later, as a teenager, Kevin (Ezra Miller) snaps. As the community recoils from Kevin and his family, Eva begins to question whether or not she ever really loved her son in the first place. John C. Reilly co-stars in this psychological drama based on the novel by Lionel Shriver, and directed by Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar).

Product Details

Release Date:	05/29/2012
UPC:	0896602002777
Original Release:	2011
Rating:	R
Source:	Oscilloscope
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:52:00
Sales rank:	24,530

Special Features

Behind the Scenes of Kevin - insights from the set with the cast and crew; ; Extra footage from the famous "La Tomatina" tomato festival in Spain; In Conversation - Telluride Film Festival honors Tilda Swinton; Interview with Lionel Shriver, author of the source novel; Original theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Tilda Swinton	Eva
John C. Reilly	Franklin
Ezra Miller	Kevin
Ashley Gerasimovich	Celia
Jasper Newell	Kevin (8 Years Old)
Siobhan Fallon	Wanda
Rocky Duer	Kevin (Toddler)
Polly Adams	Actor
Alex Manette	Actor
Leslie Lyles	Actor
Paul Diomede	Actor
J. Mallory McCree	Actor
John C.	Actor
Mark Elliot Wilson	Eva's Lawyer
Blake DeLong	Young Suited Man #1
Ursula Parker	Little Girl
Jason Shelton	Delivery Guy
Simon Maclean	Mover
Erin Darke	Young Assistant, Rose
Aaron Blakely	Concerned Man
Suzette Gunn	Young Crying Mother
Joseph Melendez	Waiter
Rebecca Dealy	Student #1
Jonny Greenwood	Composer

Technical Credits

Lynne Ramsay

Rory Stewart Kinnear

Lynne Ramsay	Director,Screenwriter,Executive Producer
Rory Stewart Kinnear	Screenwriter,Consultant/advisor,Screenwriter
Jennifer Fox	Producer
Luc Roeg	Producer
Robert Salerno	Producer
Christopher Figg	Executive Producer
Paula Jalfon	Executive Producer
Lisa Lambert	Executive Producer
Christine Langan	Executive Producer
Norman Merry	Executive Producer
Andrew Orr	Executive Producer
Michael Robinson	Executive Producer
Steven Soderbergh	Executive Producer
Tilda Swinton	Executive Producer
Robert Whitehouse	Executive Producer
Ken Ishii	Sound/Sound Designer
Paul Davies	Sound/Sound Designer
Chris Cenatiempo	Stunts
Blaise Corrigan	Stunts
Stephen Pope	Stunts
Billy Hopkins	Casting

Editorial Reviews

There are two different, though interrelated, sources of dread in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin. In addition to giving us flashbacks of a horrible crime that's never fully revealed until the movie's final minutes, Ramsay presents the bone-deep apprehension of Eva (Tilda Swinton), who worries her son's threatening behavior is her own fault. Because it is Eva's son Kevin who is responsible for the shocking act of violence, the film quickly becomes an unrelenting black hole of terror. By eschewing a linear approach to this material, Ramsay uses the first 20 minutes of screen time to get inside Eva's head. We have no idea what the images mean -- she's haunted by a curtain billowing from the air blowing through an open window and by her younger daughter wearing an eye patch -- but we empathize with Eva's disorientation and fright. After forcing us into this thoroughly discomforting state, Ramsay introduces us to a conventional plot involving a series of scenes that indicate Eva fears something is wrong with her first child. We see a pregnant Eva at a prenatal class where she's the only woman uncomfortable with her pregnant belly, and then the baby Kevin screaming all-day long when it's just him and his mother, but cooing playfully as soon as his father picks him up. All this leads to an epic battle of wills between the mentally and spiritually exhausted Eva and the cold, unforgiving toddler that ends with a trip to the emergency room for the child. During this section of the movie, and it's easily the best chunk of it, we're not sure how responsible Eva is for her young son's behavior disorders, and neither is she. The film gets at fears of parenting -- "am I just not cut out for this?" -- in a way few movies dare to go anywhere near. While Ramsay deserves credit, she can thank Tilda Swinton for giving her film so much power. This is an actress unafraid to play conflicted, but still capable of making us feel sympathetic towards her. There's a scene in which young Kevin gets sick -- it's the one time in the movie he begs for his mother's attention and acts happy to receive it -- and in that moment Eva's fear and loathing drop away. It's a brilliantly played moment, and just one of many by Swinton. Sadly, the second half of the movie, after Ezra Miller takes over the part of Kevin as a teenager, becomes a lazy psychological thriller. Not lazy in terms of directing, as Ramsay knows how to keep the foreboding doom pressing on us at all times, but the script grows almost numbingly repetitive. What we witness is scene after scene of more and more outrageous and destructive behavior from Kevin, with nobody but Eva recognizing there's a problem. There's such an unwavering sense of doom that when dad buys him an archery set, it's almost darkly comic rather than scary. Not once does this affluent mother visit a counselor, or ask friends for advice, or even discuss Kevin with her husband -- the title becomes a sick joke, because if only someone would talk about Kevin, tragedy might be averted. The movie grows frustrating, not in a challenging way that forces viewers to consider how they would act in Eva's situation, but because all of the amazing work being done by Tilda Swinton is being used for a situation that starts to feel more like a horror movie than a real problem. The film settles for shock value when it promises so much more. The last scene between Eva and Kevin actually does allow a smidgen of light into Eva's bleak world. In a way, she's rewarded for being the only one able to see what her son really is, although she can't understand it. Maybe the boy, in his own perverted way, really does love her. That's an interesting endnote, but it doesn't quite make up for how readily the film falls into a parent/child version of Fatal Attraction for so much of its second half. For Swinton alone, We Need to Talk About Kevin is worth seeing. Her rigorous commitment to making Eva a multifaceted human being helps fill many of the holes in the movie, even if it ends up feeling so much less ambitious than it could have been.