We Need to Talk About... a really amazing film!

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.

"We need to talk about Kevin" - Why?

When "We Need to Talk about Kevin" was published few years ago, it stirred up a lot of hype and the author Lionel Shriver became a celebrity in the literary world. I think all that hype scared me a bit, at least I never got around to reading the book. Maybe I was also scared of the epistolary form, something I am normally a bit repelled by. Not sure why. But the other day I felt like I really should read it and my curiousity won over my scepticism about the form. Luckily. Because this book is seriously good! An absolute classic.

The story is one, we know only too well. A boy brings a weapon to school and kills both school children, a teacher and a canteen worker. This leaves his mother, Eva, with the big question. Why?
Eva tells the story from her point of view in a series of letters to her estranged husband. It is a mother's anguished feelings put on display and Eva honestly and openly confesses that actually she never wanted Kevin in the first place and when he came into her life, she never warmed to him. Eva's story about Kevin is that he is inherently evil, a child that does everything to wex or hurt her.
However, Eva is not a reliable narrator. Her story obviously differs from the way her husband sees the family and she is biased in her interpretations of Kevin's actions.
It is a moving, disturbing, beautiful story.

The book raises several questions about parenting. It is the classic nature versus nurture dilemma. Does Keving go on a killing spree because he is inherently evil? Or because life has dealt him a tough hand and he is shaped by being brought up by a cold, loveless mother?
"We Need to Talk about Kevin" does not offer answers, only questions and the reader is left with the ultimate questios: why? Only one questions is actually answered: why did this book win the Booker Prize? Because it is a very very good book, beautifully written with a strong story.