We Need to Talk About Kevin

Saw We Need to Talk About Kevin, a film about the mother of a school shooter (named Kevin.) The film opens with the mother in her younger years attending the tomatina festival, the largest tomato-throwing fight in the world. She is held aloft over the crowd, arms outstretched like Christ on the cross, as buckets of tomato viscera are poured over her. She will be crucified over the actions of her son for the peace of mind of the parents of the other dead children. She welcomes this abuse, angrily (or perhaps warily) rebuffing all help and sympathy.

The film is pretty intense. It's shot exactly like a horror film (read the imdb plot summary. It sounds like The Omen.) This stylistic choice forces us to instinctively tense and flinch, but no screams or scares come. This film is really more about guilt and about uncertain dread. The essential message of the film is that the parents of these monsters are sometimes equally victims of their children. It's very gripping.

The film is not without its flaws however. It requires the mother to be very cold sometimes and to be a complete patsy to her son's barbs. I mean, your son is a sociopath lady. He's not the right person to cattily whisper-criticize fat people with. At one point she's reading him the story of Robin Hood in old english, full of thous and thees. He loves it in spite of being a bit tricky to follow even for adults. Unrealistic. Also Kevin himself is very boilerplate crazy-kid. His bad relationship with his mother is drawn realistically in his infancy but as he grows older, he becomes this 4chan-dweller who collects computer viruses and doesn't wield a katana, but might as well. Also he's this darkly attractive, beautiful dude who in real life would be drowning in attention (if not sex.) There's also some laziness short-hands here and there (wine and pills, huh? So I guess you're in some kind of mental difficulty?)

All that aside however, it's a very interesting, mesmerizing film. The horror-film pacing keeps us watching and this mounting sense that something is going wrong and should be corrected. I kept thinking that if she just talked to everyone involved it would be better, but perhaps that's the point of the film.