We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) is adapted from Lionel Shriver's novel and is not about a school massacre. It is about what the mother lives through afterwards. Eva gave up her career to have a child and could not bond with Kevin from the day he was born. He is cold with her and sweet with his father, and she cannot make anyone believe it. Years later Kevin does something at school, and Eva chooses to stay in the town. Nobody says anything to her. Everybody does something to her. Lynne Ramsay does not lay the story out straight. Time is broken, scenes bleed into each other, and the event itself arrives very late. That is deliberate: the film is not about the answer but about the way guilt rewrites every memory backwards. The most visible thing in it is red. Paint, tomatoes, jam, light, curtains. There is something red in almost every scene, and after a while you cannot stop seeing it. Tilda Swinton barely cries, and the whole weight of the film sits there. Ezra Miller plays the teenage Kevin. Because of Miller's later legal history many viewers no longer watch their films. Decide with that in mind. It runs 113 minutes. Good for: psychological drama, literary adaptation, and formally bold filmmaking. Less good for: it contains a school massacre and violence toward children, and the tone is oppressive from start to finish.