Movie Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Dmitri · Jan 22, 2012

Weird. Weird, weird movie. I'm honestly not sure if I liked it or not, but I watched the whole thing so I guess that means it's interesting. Weird.

spiffybeth · Jan 22, 2012

how were you able to see it? imdb says its not coming out until the 27th in america. perhaps youre not american?!?!

anyway. i read the book not long ago and i was miserable throughout. i dont know if the movie is done in the same way the book is written but she's writing letters to her husband and you already know what happened on Thursday and she's just recounting the stories and memories of their life before and after Kevin was born. and she's visiting kevin now and then and tells her husband about her visits with him. and then of course, her memories get to thursday. ugh.

is it worth seeing? was the movie itself well done?

Dmitri · Jan 22, 2012

It wasn't done as a diary or letters or anything like that. Its sort of a series of flashbacks with no timeline, and I had no idea what was going to happen until close to the end. Maybe that's why I kept watching - I'm not sure if it would be that interesting if I already knew the ending.

spiffybeth · Jan 23, 2012

its kind of sad to know they did it differently. the book is neat because youre piecing together everything that happened from her not wanting a baby and being happy to travel around and making books, to her being miserable with their son but the husband never seeing any problems. and when he drew all over the maps in her office, that was just so sad. ugh. and when she comes home that thursday. UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH. (im assuming they kept that true to the book but i cant talk about it without spoiling the ending!!)

i spent the majority of the book trying to figure out why she was writing to her husband. if he left her. if he committed suicide. if he was remarried. etc...

i might have to see this now simply because it's done so differntly.

Dmitri · Jan 24, 2012

Actually maybe you can clear something up, if the book addressed it better than the movie. Since it was pretty much all from the mothers perspective, I wasn't sure. Was the kid born bad, or did she make him bad but she blamed him?

spiffybeth · Jan 24, 2012

thats something thats kind of left up to interpretation, but she didnt want him from the start... even before he was conceived. so one might argue that he is the way he is simply because of his rejection from his mother. that loss of a connection that a mother and a baby should have was never there to begin with. maybe if he had been loved, he wouldnt have gone off the deep end. simply put, they hated each other from day 1. but he also respected her because she didnt fall for his tricks. it was pretty well done.

did the movie have a happy ending? because the book has an oddly happy ending. maybe its more of an optimistic ending rather than happy.

Dmitri · Jan 25, 2012

okay, in that the movie is the same then - it was never clear. Also, I had no idea she was a writer. Either the movie didn't say it, or I missed it.

As for the ending, now that you mention it maybe it did. There was a scene in (I believe) Spain with the tomato festival, is that the ending? They showed it at the beginning and end of the movie, but I didn't understand what it had to do with anything.

spiffybeth · Jan 25, 2012

yes, that was the whole thing with her and her husband. she didnt want to give up her life of being able to travel all over in order to keep up with her very lucrative business of writing travel guides. but in order to write them, she had to travel for weeks at a time. she always felt that he resented her ability to pick up and leave for 3 weeks at a time (or longer) and just leave him behind. that she didnt miss him the way that he missed her and they fought about it somewhat regularly. you cant have that kind of lifestyle with a baby and she was really giving up life to have a child. she very much loved being immersed in other cultures and he was 100% american everything.

i dont remember anything in the book about a tomato festival. maybe that was something ive forgotten? or maybe they took some creative license. but that is not how the book ends. are there any scenes with her and kevin while he's in jail?

Dmitri · Jan 26, 2012

They really didn't get into her backstory in the movie. Maybe they hinted and I didn't pick up on it.

As for jail, there were a few scenes but most of them were of the two just sitting at a table during visitation, not talking. I only remember one talking scene in jail, with him asking her if she remembered how he got a scar (she broke his arm potty training him).