We Need To Talk About Kevin offers up the latest reworking of a book into a film. Though bibliophiles and film buffs alike may groan in unison at the prospect of yet another adaptation, this Orange Prize-winning tale of a high school massacre, told from the perspective of the murderer’s mother, provided a surprisingly entertaining 120 minutes of chilling familial bloodshed.
The novel opens with the quote “A child needs your love most when he deserves it the least,” and the big screen production of We Need to Talk About Kevin brings to life every mother’s worst nightmare in depicting how to cope with the knowledge that they have raised a serial killer.
As a self-confessed bibliophile, I was interested to see what Hollywood would make of the chilling depiction of nature vs. nurture, pitting Tilda Swinton as the ineffectual mother-turned-victim against her coldly villainous (and equally androgynous) son Kevin.
My curiosity was immediately piqued on hearing about We Need To Talk About Kevin’s adaptation for the big screen. As it’s an epistolary novel I thought that depicting the complex flashback scenes and combining them with the events of the present would prove challenging in any We Need To Talk About Kevin reworkings.
However, the perfect casting of Swinton in such a tortured, existential role in spite of the credible American vernacular required- was enough to persuade me to purchase a ticket. I remained thoroughly on edge throughout the experience.
The danger of the novel-film hybrid is the boredom versus predictability factor. Readers of the novel who review negatively will fall into one of two camps; the bored who fail to be captivated by a plot they already know, and the incensed, for whom the adaptation fails to meet the merits of a novel they hold in such high esteem.
I confess I almost fell into the latter category with the appearance of John C. Reilly as Kevin’s naive father Franklin (really producers, you ought be ashamed!) yet the real genius of this film lies in its depiction of the novel’s plot in a way that is both artistic and prosaic simultaneously.
The opening scenes depicting Swinton being carted through a crowd during the festival of La Tomatina parallel her anguish hiding among tinned fruit cans in the soup aisle of a supermarket. Stretching the imagery a bit far? I thought so, but then I am a reader at heart and heartily encourage you to give not only this book, but also the film, a try.