Coming to Eclectic Cinema in the new year;
Lynne ramsay's uber psychological thriller, and best film winner at the London Film Festival, examines the parent-child bond (or lack of) between a first time mother and her unplanned son. This horror influenced masterwork shows just how this seemingly most natural of human connections is not always to be relied on.
This is not the story of Kevin (played at his oldest stage by a coldly menacing Ezra Miller) but of his mother Eva, brilliantly played by Tilda Swinton. To say they don't gel is an understatement. Her uneanted motherhood breaks her down over many years, aided by Kevin who uses acts ranging from the numbingly mindless to the extremely emotionally manipulative. Eva doesn't know why he is the way he is, and the screenplay is brave and wise in how much of this is explored and explained.
Ramsay uses a non-linear structure, showing two timelines simultaneously. One precedes, the other follows, and both lead to an event which merges the two, and shaped the lives of the family, leaving the audience to piece together the events, sometimes retrospectively. As with some of the director's previous works, Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, sequences of the film are heavy with artistry. Sound design, effects, colour pallette and editing help the audience enter the mind of a woman who may be suffering a nervous breakdown, or may be the victim of one of the most vindictive characters in cinema history.
This is a film that could be analysed extensively, but to a certain extent it's best to just let it take you - you are in very safe hands. It's just as much of a sensory experience as an immersive case study into the psychology of the characters.
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