We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tilda Swinton (Eva) and Jasper Newell (Kevin, as a child) in "We Need to Talk About Kevin" directed by Lynne Ramsay and distributed by BBC Films

It’s hard to understand what might motivate someone to see a movie like “We Need to Talk About Kevin” — which feels both grotesque and gratuitous as it explores a mother’s life before and after her teenage son commits horrific acts of violence.

Perhaps parents believe the film holds important clues about what makes certain children troubled, and hope it’ll reveal ways to assure their own children never go down a dark path. They’ll be disappointed.

Kevin seems deeply disturbed from a very young age, supporting the notion that nature trumps nurture. Yet those who crafted Kevin’s story clearly think nurture has some skin in the game — because the film opens with Kevin’s mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) reveling in a street running red with tomato pulp.

The supermarket soup aisle is a long way from Spain for Eva (Tilda Swinton) in the 2011 film "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

It appears she’s taking part in Spain’s annual “La Tomatina” festival. It’s our first glimpse into Eva’s passion for travel, a love affair eclipsed by marriage and children. Once husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) insists they move from city to suburbs, Eva settles for covering the walls of her own little at-home hideaway with maps.

They’re an awfully odd couple, with differences that grow more stark over time. Franklin seems a fuddy duddy, content with everyday mediocrity, who either fails to see Kevin’s flaws or prefers to live in denial. Eva feels them profoundly, but tries repeatedly to break through Kevin’s stone cold solemnity.

Kevin (as a teen, Ezra Miller) is smart, and cunning. He knows just how to manipulate his parents, setting them against one another with ease and delight. Periodic displays of apparent affection for his younger sister Celia (Ashley Gerasimovid) can’t disguise his genuine disgust at having to compete for his parents’ attention.

This happy face ballon is about as close as Kevin's parents Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Franklin (John C. Reilly) get to a smile in "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

So what’s a parent to do? Developmental issues, like being slow to talk and toilet train, are addressed by Kevin’s parents rather late in the game. But once Eva finally gets her son to a pediatrician, he assures her Kevin is perfectly normal. Franklin’s “that’s just what boys do approach” doesn’t help.

I get the feeling both “We Need to Talk About Kevin author (Lionel Shriver) and screenwriters (director Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear) want us to leave the film knowing or feeling something we hadn’t recognized before. But I can only guess what that might be.

Are frequent images of flags meant to signal violence seeping into American culture? Is Eva’s reference to Kevin being hopped up on Prozac an indictment of the pharmaceutial industry? Is Eva’s observation that Kevin commits his crimes as a minor meant to critique our juvenile justice system?

Eva (Tilda Swinton) seems doomed to a life of travel posters and empty chairs after tragedy strikes in "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

The setting often jumps between present and past — making it difficult to piece together any really helpful insights about why a child might be so mean, or a teen so moved to mayhem. Maybe it was all those child safety locks in a house where so many things become weapons. Maybe it was the eerie similarities between mother and son.

I’d have prefered a more linear telling of this tale. Instead, Ramsay delivers a collage of images, most awash in red — mixed with jarring sound and musical selections like “Nobody’s Child,” “In My Room,” and “Mothe’s’ Last Word to Her Son.” It’s creepy, and moves the film from a mix of maternal memoir and morality tale to horror movie.

Most disturbing is the film’s implication that those with signs of serious mental illness are simply evil — or ruined by refrigerator mothers. We should all know better in a day and age when advances in neuroscience are making clear the very real connections between brain and behavior.

Most heartening is its depiction of small acts of human kindness, which is the only part of this film I really expect or care to remember.

— Lynn

Note: “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is rated R with good reason. It contains adult language, sexual content and extreme violence.

Coming up: The fine art of sidewalk chalk, Thumbs up!

What’s a parent to do?

A scene from "Carnage" from Sony Pictures Classics

French playwright Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” which won the 2009 Tony Award for best play, has been adapted for the big screen and titled simply “Carnage.” The screenplay was written by Reza and the film’s director, Roman Polanski. Unlike the original play, which was set in Paris, the Broadway production and film are set in New York.

As the movie opens, children play in a Brooklyn park — and a boy who’s being teased by fellow tweens turns to face them. A slim tree branch he swipes through the air leaves another boy injured, and the film cuts quickly to two sets of parents attempting to smooth over the hurt.

Investment banker Nancy Cowan (Kate Winslet) and corporate attorney Alan Cowan (Christoph Waltz) are parents of the “bully,” while writer Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) and wholesaler Michael Longstreet (John C. Reilly) are parents of the “victim.”

The Longstreets have invited the Cowans to their apartment hoping for some sort of resolution, but obstacles abound. First, Penelope’s fondness for melodrama and martyrdom. Then Alan’s inability to leave work at the office. When Penelope’s apple-pear cobbler doesn’t sit well with Nancy, things get messy.

Penelope cares deeply about everything — from the contents of her refrigerator to the plight of people in Darfur. Alan readily admits to not giving a damn about much of anything. It’s this contrast in characters, and the conflict it creates, that gives the film its bite.

Nearly the entire film, only 80 minutes in length, is shot in real time using just a single set — mainly the Longsteet’s living room. But kitchen and bathroom are sometimes called into service — as are bucket, blow dryer and bottle of Scotch.

Foster describes the film as “a comedy of manners.” Manners dissolve quickly into mayhem as marital spats and misunderstandings spiral out of control. The more civilized these couples seek to become, the more their savagery shines. It’s perfectly pleasurable to watch.

The movie feels faster and sharper than the play somehow. The dialogue feels funnier. The absurdity feels more plausible. The camera allows close-ups that just aren’t possible when watching a play performed on stage. And the movie’s ending has an unexpected twist.

Still, parents leave both play and movie asking similar questions. Were the bully’s actions justified? Should he apologize? What if the apology’s insincere? When can parents lecture other people’s children? How far does the apple (or pear) fall from the tree? Is being a “snitch” a bad thing? Should parents fight their children’s battles?

— Lynn

Note: Although “Carnage” is rated “R” for language, many parents will find it rather mild and feel perfectly comfortable taking their teens (though teens will be less amused than adults by the film’s satirical slant on parenting).

Coming up: More couples behaving badly, My favorite New Year’s message

Neanderthals making nice?

Cast of Arizona Theatre Company production of God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza

There’s a point in the play “God of Carnage” where things take a decided turn, but making it that far into the Arizona Theatre Company production, which I saw on opening night, took some doing. I found myself thinking, “I can’t take any more of these plays about people whining on pristine sofas.”

Soon slurs, swearing and something best left unnamed before the uninitiated start spewing forth — and the story develops at a quickening pace. Still, theater afficianonado Alan Handelsman, who was part of the first class of ASU Gammage Goer reviewers, felt “there was something missing” in the opening night performance.

Handelsman and his wife Anita saw the play a couple of years ago in New York City, and he’s got a clear preference for the NYC version’s vibe — feeling it had more “energy, commitment, rhythm, flow, surprise, pacing, abandon, arc and continuity.” Even simple prop choices, he recalls, gave the NYC production “a much greater sense of impending danger.”

Clockwise: Joey Parsons, Bob Sorenson, Amy Resnick and Benjamin Evett in the ATC production of God of Carnage

The Arizona Theatre Company production was good, says Handelsman, but not great. Despite being surrounded at the Herberger Theater Center by people laughing loud and proud, I’m afraid I have to concur. “God of Carnage” felt a bit of a letdown — perhaps because I went into it expecting so much. “God of Carnage” won the 2009 Tony Award for best play.

Other people whose opinions I respect felt differently. I saw Frances Smith Cohen, artistic director for Center Dance Ensemble, and her daughter Rachel Cohen in the theater foyer after the show, and both praised its artistry. Rachel loved “the writing and directing” and Frances “the contrast in characters.” My own theater baby Lizabeth, who has studied dance with both, would likely take their side.

We talked via “Skype” after I got home from the theater Saturday night, and Lizabeth was shocked when I shared my tepid response to the show. She saw “God of Carnage” in Chicago last year while touring colleges with my husband James. Both remember it being fabulously funny.

Lizabeth described it as “well written and well acted” — and shared that she loved watching the different characters evolve during the course of the story. Seems she was amused by just how “quickly the adults became the children.”

“God of Carnage” centers on two couples’ attempts at a civilized conversation after their sons spar on a playground. “You just don’t expect it to go as far as it does,” reflects Lizabeth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen dad laugh that much,” she recalls. “He totally let loose.”

“Maybe.” she says, “it was his way of letting off steam after all the things that happened when we were little.” Seems she’s observed that the things we sometimes took too much to heart as young parents now fall into more perspective. “You used to take it all so seriously,” she told me. “You guys have learned to let go since then.”

The journey from kindergarden to college does effect profound changes. But the parents in “God of Carnage” have survived only grade school, and the perils of middle school are proving a bit more daunting. After meeting to discuss one boy’s use of a stick and another’s missing teeth, they demonstrate that words are perhaps the worst weapons of all.

The parents who seem so perfectly civilized to begin with soon dissolve into shreiking narcissism and nihilism, something that feels more believable once alcohol enters the picture. I hate to think any of us could trade “nice” for “Neanderthal” so quickly in its absence.

Handelsman, a highly-trained hypnotherapist, says the play reveals “how many different layers humans live in” — showing “the difference between the person we show, and the person we are, and the person we may be afraid we are.” Confronted with the final image in this production, we realize that humans haven’t evolved nearly as far as they imagine.

— Lynn

Note: This original production, directed by Rick Lombardo, is a co-production of Arizona Theatre Company and San Jose Repertory Theatre (which performs it next spring). Yasmina Reza has teamed with Roman Polanski to write the screenplay for a movie titled “Carnage,” directed by Polanski and scheduled for mid-December release. It stars Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Click here to learn about another opportunity to see the play performed live. Please note that “God of Carnage” contains “mature content.”

Coming up: Advice for young filmmakers, Handelsman shares his “Wicked” ways, Holiday shopping “arts and culture” style, The fine “Art” of Yasmina Reza

Photos: Tim Fuller for Arizona Theatre Company