Right so it's been a long long time - or at least many days - since I've done any blogging. The reason for this absence is not that I no longer love blogging or reading but that I have moved to: another job in another industry, another city and another country. Quite a bit of change in one go. So at the moment focus is on settling in, getting to know my way around etc. etc.
Last weekend after a rather tough week in new position in a new department, my boyfriend took me to the cinema and even let me choose the film so we went for "We Need to Talk About Kevin". I read the book by Lionel Shriver a year or so ago and loved it so I was quite worried about the film actually. Would they be able to tell this horrible story without resorting to overdramatizing or focusing too much on Kevin and too little on the family. The book is so special. Even though it is all about Kevin, he is hardly in it. A minor character that the entire plot centers around. And the narrator, Eva, is unable to see outside of her own context at all which means that the reader has to do his/her bit to understand what is at play here. It is a difficult book to translate into a movie.
When we left the cinema, I was more or less stunned by the fact that the director had managed what I had in no way expected: to make the film a natural extension of the book. A lot of this is down to the incredible Tilda Swinton, who is probably the only actress on earth able to rightly portray Eva. Distressed, broken Eva whose life has been taken from her and left her with a shattered existence as an outcast. Much of story is not told outright but by her actions, her facial expressions and she takes this movie to another level - it is not sensational or cliche or over-emotional as one could have feared. It is silently strong, it made me physically uncomfortable in the best possible sense because it is so obvious that this is a family doomed to tragedy. Ezra Miller as Kevin is beyond amazing. A great career awaits this actor, I am sure, because he does a great job of portraying a range of emotions from sadness to a burning rage.
If you are wondering what to do next weekend, going to the cinema to watch "We Need to Talk About Kevin" would definitely be my suggestion.
I like Tilda Swinton a lot, she is such a talented actress.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about seeing this film because I didn't love the book, I found it hard going and a bit over-analytic. Maybe the film is pacier though?
I'm with you on Tilda Swinton, she is so talented. The film is not fast-paced but definitely not as analytical as the book. Actually it does very little analysis - it just sort of shows the story of Eva and Kevin.
ReplyDeleteI am so, so, so glad to hear the movie was good. I really loved the book, but it's such a hard one to describe to others. I was so worried that people would only see the movie and never read the book and would have no idea how powerful the story really was.
ReplyDelete@Melissa: I know, I felt exactly the same way. But I actually think that this movie is one of those that makes you read the book even though you didn't plan to. It was really powerful.
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