We need to talk about Kevin is a 2011 film directed by Lynn Ramsey about a mother and her adversarial relationship with her son Kevin. The film is a challenging and visceral experience with a constant heavy tone that keeps an intense mode that crushes the viewer throughout the film.
A few things are making the film interesting. The first thing is the structure of the film. It switches back and forth between the present and the past. The mother of Kevin is named Eva played brilliantly by the always amazing Tilda Swinton.
It is clear something has happened in the present, Kevin is in jail and everybody hates Eva for reasons unknown to the audience. Random people just walk up to her and hit her in the face, she hides when she encounters a certain person in the grocery store. The constant switching back and forth works amazingly well, keeping the viewer guessing.
We learn at the end that Kevin used his skills as an archer to murder a lot of people in his high school. Kevin is played by Ezra Miller and his performance is incredible as well. Kevin seems cold, distant, and manipulative toward the mother. Given how he acts throughout the film the final reveal of him killing people is not really a surprise and in a way you kind of see it coming with how the film unfolds.
The most important question is:
Why did Kevin do it? Why did he kill those people and torment his mother that way from an early age?
To first understand Kevin and his motivation we need to invoke some philosophy.
The British Philosopher John Locke was convinced that a child is born as a blank slate meaning the child holds no thoughts, feelings, or concepts about the world and that the child must interact with the world to know stuff. In contrast, the French philosopher Rene Descartes was convinced of the opposite that children are born with certain concepts that in philosophy are known as a priori concepts.
If you believe Locke was right then Kevin is born as a blank slate and thus he “learns” to be evil from his environment and his mother.
If this is true Eva takes a majority of the blame and it is thus somewhat justified to hit her on the street.
If you agree with Descartes then Kevin is born evil and Eva holds no responsibility and it is therefore not okay to hit her in public.
That is all well and good but what happens in the film?
In the film, Kevin cries a lot….. Well, no shit every baby cries from time to time. This is different or at least it feels different. Kevin cries so much that Eva has to stand next to a construction site to drown out the noise of the baby. According to Eva Kevin cries way more than the average baby. However, when his father (John C Reilly) holds him he doesn’t cry at all.
There could be 2 reasons.
First of all, the father might have gotten lucky. Holding Kevin in a split second where he doesn’t cry.
The second and more sinister reason could be that he wants to annoy Eva. Throughout the film, Kevin displays different attitudes and emotions with his dad than with his mother.
A baby can’t actually choose this so it would have to be instinctual. Kevin hates his mother so much that much is clear. If he were to cry as a baby only to annoy her it would indicate how evil he is.
When Kevin is a child around 6-8 years old he and Eva have an argument and Eva pushes him into a wall and he breaks his arm. At the hospital, we do not know what Kevin says to the nurse or the doctor, However, when they both return home and the father asked what happened
Kevin tells a lie saying it was his fault alone and that Eva did nothing except drive him to the hospital. Why would Kevin say that?
Maybe he wants to protect his mother and deep down he really does care for her. Maybe he just wants to manipulate her, giving her a greater feeling of guilt than she already has.
There are many instances of Kevin behaving rudely towards her mother. A particularly weird situation is when Eva accidentally walks in on Kevin masturbating. Instead of stopping he looks at his mother and keeps going until she closes the door in shame. This along with many other situations indicated that Kevin is a strange one and that he acts differently around his mother.
There is one episode where Kevin as a child gets sick. When he is sick he is behaving like a normal kid he even apologizes to Eva for being sick. The two of them have a heartfelt moment when Eva reads to him in bed. Funnily enough, when he is sick he talks shit to his father and not his mother. The next day Kevin is feeling better and is back to his devilish behavior.
This could mean that Kevin is only putting up a front that disappears when he feels vulnerable.
When Kevin was a toddler Eva speaks to him in frustration saying she would be better if had never been born and how she would be a lot happier if he had never been. These words could have affected Kevin on a deeper level. Eva could have conjured Kevin’s personality without knowing it.
Now, it is all well and good discussing these things but Kevin kills a lot of people including his father and sister.
The thing to keep in mind is that he does not kill his mother who he hates more than anybody. I first thought it was because he wanted her to live a shitty life where everybody hates her. I thought Kevin planned it that way, but in the end, I was left unsure.
In the last scene of the film, Eva asks Kevin why he did it. Kevin’s replay is telling. He says he doesn’t know and that he thought he did at the time. The two of them share a hug and despite everything a mother will always love their child.
Red
The film uses color really well, and I personally love when a movie utilizes colors. Though it only uses one color, red. At the beginning of the film, Eva is having a dream about a tomato festival in Spain. Everybody is drenched in red tomato juice. The imagery is supposed to invoke a correlation with blood, foreshadowing that this film is about murder.
Red in this film means danger and violence (both physical and psychological).
Random people throw red paint on Eva’s house. When she hides in the convenience store she hides behind some stacked red cans. Red is ever-present in the film.
Conclusion
We need to talk about Kevin is a film exploring the age-old idea of nature vs nurture and how a person’s identity and personality are actualized. I do not think the answer is simple. I see arguments going both ways on the topic. While it feels like a copout to say I would think the answer lies in the middle of the two. I think a combination of nature and nurture is what formed Kevin.
Overall The film is heavy and not exactly pleasant to watch, but the atmosphere and structure of the film makes it a fantastic watch never the less. It is further enhanced by some amazing performances by the lead actors.
I definitely recommend it.