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We need to talk about We need to talk about Kevin

Started by Talulah, really!, October 18, 2011, 11:16:18 PM

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Talulah, really!

http://youtu.be/ZLRgAe2jLaw

So after ten years there is finally a new Lynne Ramsay film based upon Lionel Shriver's womb-clenching best seller about a reluctant mother and her murderous offspring. The reviews are certainly promising, garlanded with praise and while the  trailer hints at the cold alienating look of "The Shining" it is to be hoped the film will be leavened and deepened with the human warmth to be found in her earlier films.

Certainly it is good that Ramsay is making her own work here from the book, adapting it freely, as a source for her own artistic vision much as she did with "Morvern Callar" which is one of my favourite films ever whilst the novel it is based on lies a long way down the list, a very long way.......longer than that.......keep going.....past fungal infections.....past ingrowing toenail ...past "Bingo" by Catch....past root canal work.....

Morvern Callar is on BBC1 tomorrow night at midnight, it's a visually ravishing and intelligent film, full of allusive echoes of great film makers and of what makes them great. One of the aspects I particularly like is the way Ramsay will drift into a scene after the characters have already started and leave before they have finished. It is a film composed of moments that coalesce into a mood and sensibility that come to reflect the enigmatic eponymous character at the centre of the film (Samantha Morton at her best, though her Scottish accent is rubbish!)

Finally, and my apologies, since this post isn't very good, here is a scene from "Ratcatcher" her first full length film sent during a dustbin collectors' strike in 1970s Glasgow[nb]"The Glamour, The Glamour!",[/nb] it is a poem in and of it's self. Oh, and Yoker

http://youtu.be/hOZKbOwNGhQ

^^^^WATCH THAT^^^^^

Funcrusher

I was also a big fan of 'Ratcatcher' and 'Morvern Callar' (wouldn't touch the novel or anything else by its author with a bargepole), so I'm looking forward to seeing this.

vrailaine

Love her other films but I dunno if I'll be spending €30 or so traveling and dedicating a whole day towards seeing this in Dublin.
Looks brilliant, mind.

What has she spent the last ten years at?

Herbert Ashe

Quote from: vrailaine on October 19, 2011, 03:49:46 AM
What has she spent the last ten years at?

On Night Waves last night she said she spent time working on an adaptation of The Lovely Bones but that was ended when Peter Jackson got his version done. That's one chunk of it, anyway.

CaledonianGonzo

Ah - interesting about Morvern Callar.  I had such an extreme adverse reaction to the book that I just steered away from the film, despite enjoying Ratcatcher.  Might take a look tomorrow evening.

For me, the book shared many elements with Douglas Coupland's Hey Nostradamus!.

mcbpete

Just come back from watching it this evening. Really enjoyable and utterly brilliant performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller. John C. Reilly's character seemed little more than a footnote to the script, but given that his role really wasn't the focus of the film it wasn't too much of an issue. Regarding the end, anyone else think that
Spoiler alert
it should've ended with the shot of Kevin bowing in the sports hall - everything post that seemed a little extraneous
[close]

lipsink

#7
Is the (brilliant) score by Jonny Greenwood not going to be available to buy? Can't seem to find it anywhere.
Anyway, I loved the film.

Endicott

Quote from: Talulah, really! on October 18, 2011, 11:16:18 PM
Morvern Callar is on BBC1 tomorrow night at midnight, it's a visually ravishing and intelligent film, full of allusive echoes of great film makers and of what makes them great. One of the aspects I particularly like is the way Ramsay will drift into a scene after the characters have already started and leave before they have finished. It is a film composed of moments that coalesce into a mood and sensibility that come to reflect the enigmatic eponymous character at the centre of the film (Samantha Morton at her best, though her Scottish accent is rubbish!)

I caught Morvern Callar when it was on the Beeb a couple of years ago, and liked it immensely. Regarding Morton's accent, isn't this addressed in the film? She doesn't seem to be even attempting a Scottish accent, but there's that bit near(ish) the beginning where she answers the public phone at the railway station, and you only hear her side of the conversation but it's obvious that the person she's talking to has made a comment about her accent not being from around those parts. That is assuming I've remembered that correctly. I haven't read the book so I don't know if that fits with the original story.

Anyway I'll be looking out for WNTTAK with great interest.

hpmons

Really enjoyed that.  To my mind it more compliments the book, though someone I know saw the film having not read it and still liked it, so I guess it works decently on its own.  There were a lot of great little details, like
Spoiler alert
Near the beginning when theres a flashback to That Day, he plonks his bag on the table and its clear its unusually heavy.  Also my eyes were a little watery at the bit where someone slaps her, a stranger offers to call the police and she says "No really, its my fault".  And all the other horrible comments towards her, like the co-worker.  It was great that the young guy who was actually wounded was nice to her though.
[close]

Still had a few niggles with it.  Very little focus on her freedom before she became pregnant - the book itself goes into this too much from what I remember (I need to read it again), but her comment of
Spoiler alert
"Mummy was happy before you came along!"
[close]
would have worked better if they showed more of the Before Birth.  Also the first half hour or so has too much flashing back and forth, too disorientating.

Quote from: mcbpete on October 23, 2011, 12:19:49 AM
Just come back from watching it this evening. Really enjoyable and utterly brilliant performances from Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller. John C. Reilly's character seemed little more than a footnote to the script, but given that his role really wasn't the focus of the film it wasn't too much of an issue. Regarding the end, anyone else think that
Spoiler alert
it should've ended with the shot of Kevin bowing in the sports hall - everything post that seemed a little extraneous
[close]

I guess.  The whole
Spoiler alert
"Why?"/"I thought I knew" thing seemed too heavy-handed - it would have been enough to just show him looking more withdrawn and uncertain as he seemed to be in the last prison scene.
[close]

Anscombe

I thought this was a major disappointment.  I am a huge admirer of Ramsay's previous two films, especially Morvern Callar, and am delighted that she is managing to make films again.  And this film at least showed that her extraordinary visual gifts haven't deserted her.  Watching the film, together with the previews for the new Terence Davies film ("The Deep Blue Sea"), is enough to expose most of the rest of contemporary British cinema for the mediocre mess that it is.  Davies is a master of rigorous shot composition and precise camera movement.  Ramsay is superb at creating a disquieting, unique, and uniquely subjective atmosphere.  The fact that these two directors have been sidelined for so long is sufficient to expose the flimsy and philistinist foundations on which (what passes for) the British film industry rests.

However, the problem with "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is that Ramsay has decided to put her wonderful gifts--along with the exceptional acting talents of her three main players--at the service of the worst kind of schlock, schlock that thinks it's Art.  Shriver's novel is cheap, misanthropic dreck.  And so, for this reason, is Ramsay's film.  Indeed, so dismal, unrelenting, and unenlightening is the story which Ramsay has chosen to visualise that it only serves to lessen Ramsay's own style, to make her images seem as tacky, sensationalistic and ultimately empty as the film's plot--if 'plot' is the right word to describe the remorseless parade of tiresome shock-effects which Ramsay and Shriver subject us to.  The effect is truly numbing.   As scene follows scene you know exactly what is going to happen: that Kevin is going to behave like the worst caricature of a vicious little shit--and so he does; that Mr. Sellophane is going to be immune to all of this--tick; and that the darling little daughter is going to be angelic and to suffer for it--right on cue.  What do we learn from this?  Not much, except that Shriver is a dreadful writer. 

"Oh but don't you see, the Tilda Swinton character is meant to be an unreliable narrator, who can only see the worst in her son.  You're confusing the presentation of the unreliable narrator's troubled and unreliable subjective consciousness with a realistic depiction of mother-son relations."
--I'm afraid that's a cop out.  Given what Kevin goes on to do--and I take it *that* is not a mere figment of his mother's consciousness; that would be the "adult novel" equivalent of "And it was all a dream"--the mother's take on the son seems to be vindicated, at least in part.  But the real point is that if the mother's consciousness is as shallow, unsubtle, and utterly lacking in insight as this film is, then what is the point of trying to realise her consciousness in a novel, or in a film?  Marcel Proust may be a fastidious neurotic, but at least his is a consciousness which is worth turning into Art.  I am sure Shriver (and Ramsay) think they are making Art.  The British film critics seems to agree.  But the French have seen through this one.  See the review in Cahiers du Cinema, for example.  In short: great director, bad film. 

falafel

Why are you capitalizing Art?

I'm not sure I've ever really learnt anything in particular from a film or book. I just don't get the 'what do we learn from this' angle. That's not to say that I don't have an intellectual response, but you seem to be after some kind of case study here rather than a novel or film. Sure, it's utterly melodramatic at its heart, but denying it credibility on account of its misanthropy or lack of realism just seems daft.

Anscombe

Why are you capitalizing Art?

--To indicate the film's pretentions.  The capitalisation in the Proust-related sentence is a typo.

I'm not sure I've ever really learnt anything in particular from a film or book. I just don't get the 'what do we learn from this' angle. That's not to say that I don't have an intellectual response, but you seem to be after some kind of case study here rather than a novel or film.

--That's a massive leap.  A work of art can tell us something without being a case study.  And telling us something--giving us (some sort) of knowledge, of the world, and of ourselves--is one of the things that great art does.  It holds a mirror up to nature (as the Prince said).

Sure, it's utterly melodramatic at its heart, but denying it credibility on account of its misanthropy or lack of realism just seems daft

--Melodrama and lack of realism are fine.  Misanthropy is another thing entirely.  Works of art are like people to the extent that they can be described in ethically negative terms--as misanthropic, misogynistic, fascistic, etc.  And to describe them in those terms is to criticise them (although not, of course, on grounds of credibility--*that* was never the issue).  If that's daft, so be it.   

Peru

Anscombe, it seems I got a lot more out of this than you did. I don't think that the film is misanthropic at all, actually - rather it seems to be a story about redemption and suffering, and the sacrifices parents make (or don't make) for their children. The flashing forward and backward to moments before or after certain decisions were made - to have the child, to tell her child that she wishes he'd never been born - seemed to me to reflect the consciousness of Swinton's character as her memory sorted through all the potential tipping points and bad decisions that head toward the events that have come to define her life. Her behaviour in the "present day" bits of the film are actually, implicitly, the greatest show of love for her child in that she has chosen to suffer for him, to take his reputation on to herself, to remain where she is so that she can visit him. Is this her narcisissm from before his birth in another form - making herself into a martyr? Or has she genuinely come to an epiphany about the selflessness she needs to embrace to love her son?

All of Ramsay's technique - the varying degrees of red (a kind of metaphorical Catholic passion and scourging), the musical motifs and songs represted and recontextualised across different backdrops - heads off the criticism that I've heard from various quarters about the film not being suspenseful. I really don't think it's supposed to be - we get ever more information as we go but it's clear that we are converging on a terrible crime and the narrative is more about the exploration of the crime.

I don't really think she is supposed to be an unreliable narrator as such, rather that we're just in her consciousness for the whole film. We never know Kevin because she never knows Kevin. I found the film to be an incredibly complex emotional ride, with Ramsay's trademark use of texture and sound beautifully dovetailing with the subject matter.

phes

Quote from: Anscombe on November 04, 2011, 02:50:09 AM
However, the problem with "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is that Ramsay has decided to put her wonderful gifts--along with the exceptional acting talents of her three main players--at the service of the worst kind of schlock, schlock that thinks it's Art.  Shriver's novel is cheap, misanthropic dreck.  And so, for this reason, is Ramsay's film.  Indeed, so dismal, unrelenting, and unenlightening is the story which Ramsay has chosen to visualise that it only serves to lessen Ramsay's own style, to make her images seem as tacky, sensationalistic and ultimately empty as the film's plot--if 'plot' is the right word to describe the remorseless parade of tiresome shock-effects which Ramsay and Shriver subject us to.  The effect is truly numbing.   As scene follows scene you know exactly what is going to happen: that Kevin is going to behave like the worst caricature of a vicious little shit--and so he does; that Mr. Sellophane is going to be immune to all of this--tick; and that the darling little daughter is going to be angelic and to suffer for it--right on cue.  What do we learn from this?  Not much, except that Shriver is a dreadful writer. 

I hate to do the 'I agree with everything the previous caller' but in this case I must. Only two days ago I summed up the film for my girlfriend who had read the book a few years back. And that is what I said, moreorless word for word.

My second most frustrating cinema experience ever, hot on the heels of drinking two double espresso's and sitting down to watch The Road.

Kishi the Bad Lampshade

John C. Reilly looks more and more like the Larry mask every day.

Pie Pie Eater

What was with the casting of Kevin? He didn't look remotely like he could have been their child.

I thought there would have been a lot more mileage in questioning to what extent nature and nurture produced Kevin's murderous tendencies. As it is, I can't see it being interpreted as anything other than that he was born evil. He was far too calculating at an unrealistically early age.

I haven't read the book, but the film seemed to me to be cynically using fear to promote childlessness (when there are so many other good reasons).

Bad Ambassador

Quote from: Pie Pie Eater on November 10, 2011, 01:08:30 PM
As it is, I can't see it being interpreted as anything other than that he was born evil. He was far too calculating at an unrealistically early age.

Eva resented him from the moment he was conceived. There's your nurture argument, right there.

Pie Pie Eater

Hmm, I don't remember seeing enough of that in the film, but I could definitely be wrong. There was no abortion consideration was there?

thepuffpastryhangman

All the intersting little bits neutralize any nasty bits.
Spoiler alert
The pillow case, the spray paint on the maps in mum's room, the paint on her house, the tomatos at the start, the red ballons on Kevin's t-shirt, the hot dog inviting a slap of mustard on his other one (and the way he kept wearing them) the halloween eggs...the room she'd made up for him at the end having crapper versions of his bed and lamp and bedside table...when mum, dad and Kevin are sat at dinner, when it's announced his sister needs a glass eye, the vases are well positioned and I like that sorta shit. There was loads and loads of other nice bits, like it's all comapring itself to earlier and later bits of itself all the time. In that long winded way too. The costumes and sets and stuff were all good. None of it seemed that ridiculous in a fighting fate fighting genes fashion.
[close]

That said I don't get out to the movies hardly at all. And there's often not much choice.


Noodle Lizard

Just watched this yesterday, having really looked forward to it, and I'm afraid to say it disappointed me too.  I just didn't find anything particularly interesting about it, and it was surprisingly full of very cheesy, sub-Joker one-liners ("There is no reason ... that is the reason!  Muahahaha").  I don't know, it didn't do anything for me.  But I don't seem to like anything anymore.

El Unicornio, mang

I'd quite like to see this, generally it's been getting good reviews, Reilly and Swinton are usually worth a watch and Jonny Greenwood did the music. Couldn't stand Ratcatcher though which puts me off a bit.

Retinend

Really well made film with a subject matter that is handled in bad taste. Can't fault it for being very intelligently made (the symbolism, the attention to aging of the body, the chilling exchanges) and precision tuned for extracting the emotions it wants out of you... but the plot and characters were absolute stinkers. The most egregious plot hole was the idea that she would be terrorised in town - even though the victims included her husband and cute-as-a-button daughter - but this didn't get in the way of the plot's relentless desire to degrade and humiliate a character to the full extent of possible imagination. The child isn't even allowed a fag break before he's being a cartoonishly evil cunt... even in nappies he's exacting psychological terrorism.

vrailaine

Enjoyed Ratcatcher but wish I got to see it in a better environment and loved most of Morvern Callar, but was pretty disappointed here. Gonna mostly blame the source material, not my kind of thing at all, but, considering it's 110 minutes, she probably could have done a better job telling the story.
It was okay, would've been quite annoyed if I was waiting 9 years for it though.