Viewing Journal: 12/12/2011

650) WE NEED 

       TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
(2011 dir. Lynne Ramsay) Date Seen: December 12 2011

[Disclaimer: I have not read the book this was based on. I came here as a Lynne Ramsay fan first & foremost]

I admired this film more than I loved it. Tilda Swinton is obviously on an amazing streak & giving one of her career best performances, & Ramsay remains a filmmaker of astonishing visual instinct. + there are clearly passages here of genuine power—moments that burrow under the skin and linger long after the credits roll.. Yet, for me, the film's relentless formalism occasionally works against its emotional core. Those flashes of art-house bravura and heavily insistent symbolism sometimes felt more calculated than revelatory; leaving me at an emotional distance when I think the true wreckage of the situation should have left me devastated. So i found myself curiously admiring the craftsmanship of the thing rather than surrendering to it. Maybe that's why it feels, to my eyes, like a slight step back from the extraordinary grace of Ramsay's first two features (RATCATCHER and MORVERN CALLAR), and even her remarkable shorts. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is a deeply unsettling picture in how it takes a story of unspeakable school violence/mass murder and then turns it into a meditation on guilt, alienation, and the fear of not really knowing those we thought we were closest to.. I only wish its undeniable artistry had trusted its humanity a little more.