Mommie
dearest
Lynne
Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011), her first feature
in nine years and an adaptation of the novel by Lionel Shriver is, to
put it simply, spectacularly messed up.
The
story follows the life of one Eva Katchadourian (Tilda Swinton) as
she gives birth to her son Kevin (played at various ages by Rocky
Duer, Jasper Newell, and Ezra Miller as the child, youth, and
teenaged Kevin respectively), struggles to raise him to doubtful
young adulthood and, much later, live a life made lonely by
ostracization from the community--though not necessarily in
that order. Ramsay shuffles the time order, her way of echoing the
novel's structure (a series of letters written by Eva to her husband
that look back on her life), leaving clues along the way of something
terrible that happens--will happen--later in the film, possibly the
reason for her isolated status.
Ramsay's
not an untalented filmmaker; she directs the film with a creepy
deadpan tone, something of a cross between the hilariously serious
(I'm thinking of Richard Donner's deadly earnest The Omen
(1976)) and the seriously hilarious (Barry Sonnenfeld's Addams
Family Values (1993), with a waywardly witty script by Paul
Rudnick). Ramsay surrounds mother and son with a supporting cast full
of grotesques (Alex Manette as a creepily predatory office co-worker, John C. Reilly as the eternally sweaty-looking husband), some (with the help of cinematographer Seamus
McGarvey) striking imagery predominantly highlighted by a vivid shade
of red (Swinton posed against a Warholian background of soup cans), and a soundtrack sprinkled with choices obvious (Buddy
Holly's “Everyday”), and not-so-obvious (George Michael's “Last
Christmas,” a selection from the score of Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine).
There's
an argument to be made that Swinton is miscast here, being reportedly
a less-than-empathic actress of the Isabelle Huppert school of
onscreen disdain. I don't see it (actually I don't see it in Huppert
who, when used judiciously, can be devastatingly effective); here Swinton's the hard-pressed mother, her most
consistently funny expression being a caught-in-the-headlights look on her face as she realizes time and again just what she's dealing with. As for her beloved son Ramsay manages to inspire every one
of the Kevins, from toddler to teen, to flash the trademark
Kubrickian evil psycho grin (see Jack Nicholson in The Shining
(1980), or Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket (1987)), to
which Swinton's Eva can only respond with exhausted dismay. Yes,
Swinton's default mode is cold fish, but I actually found this
more fascinating--a woman unapologetically accustomed to flying all
over the world and writing about her travels suddenly confined to a
single house in a tiny town with the Devil's spawn. She doesn't give
in to her neighbors, she doesn't give in to us her audience; when she
does give in, almost despite herself, it's a startling moment, and
startlingly moving...
Perhaps
my biggest problem with the film is the lack of psychological
insight; we're outside looking in, and Ramsay doesn't even seem all
that interested in doing more than suggest what drives both mother
and son (and, equally interesting, what makes mother just as
culpable as son). The film is really a series of darkly comic gags,
artfully shuffled together and strikingly photographed--not
unentertaining, but not something you would take seriously on the
issue.
Perhaps
it helps to look at another film for comparison. Lino Brocka is not the most sophisticated filmmaker in the world; his pictures work best as blood melodramas, with a sense of you-are-there immediacy. He's a
straightforward, no-nonsense artist whose subtlest ability is a gift for modulating actors, coaxing them to underplay so that the melodrama starts looking larger and more
profound--touching at times the level of dramatic art.
His Insiang (1976) covers roughly the same territory, albeit in a
more straightforward manner: girl raised by less-than-loving
mother, learns through abuse and neglect to give back as good as
she gets, or better. Perhaps the difference here is that you identify
with different points of view--mother, being abandoned by her husband;
daughter being abandoned (emotionally if not literally) by her
mother. Brocka makes both sides real, can't help but
sympathize with both points of view--and are horrified when both
clash dramatically, then violently.
Brocka
doesn't use a fancy back-and-forth time scheme, doesn't use a
beautifully modulated color palette. His camerawork (by the great
Conrado Baltazar) exploits sunlight and available
incandescents (or appears to do so, at least, better even than slum dramas are able to do
today); his script (by longtime collaborator and
filmmaker Mario O'Hara) is ripped out of the here-and-now (O'Hara claims
the story happened to his backyard neighbors in the district of Pasay). We Need to Talk
About Kevin isn't a bad film, really--it's brilliantly shot and
acted and morbidly entertaining--but doesn't have the white-hot
intensity of unvarnished truth, or of a Brocka film.
First published in Businessworld, 6/21/12
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