movies
5/3
BY MOLLY TEMPLETON
for May 3-May 10
THU
5/4
5/5
5/6
5/7
5/8
5/9
5/10
FRI SAT SUN MON TUE WED THU
A trio of girls set out to change the
H.P.
LOVECRAFT male-dominated environment of
their college campus.
DOUBLE
2:45 2:45
FEATURE
5:15 5:15 5:15 5:15 5:15 5:15 5:15
A
R
T
9:15
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS 7:30 7:30
TILDA SWINTON JOHN C. REILLY
C
I
N
E
M
A
S
5:00
7:30
492 East 13 th
A
CITY OF
SADNESS
FREE!
686-2458
bijou-cinemas.com
6:00
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
HOME
7:30 7:30 7:30 7:30 7:30
3:00 3:00
5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45
8:15 8:15 8:15 8:15 8:15 8:15 8:15
A stunning visual portrayal of earth with aerial footage from 54 countries...
(Free Screening!)
NOON a depiction of how the Earth's problems are all interlinked.
NEXT: INNI
THE RAID
ROCKY
HORROR
PICTURE
SHOW
JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI
11:00
11:00
With live performance by Forbidden Fruit
17+ only $10 No Passes
GOON
THE KID WITH A BIKE
HOW TO GROW A BAND
*Adults—$7 * Students w/ID—$6 * Seniors—$5 * Matinees—$5 * Miser Mondays—$3*
TIX $2 Tix 21 & FOOD
$5 Sun & Tues ovER MENU
762-1700 | 180 E. 5TH AVE
davidminortheater.com
THURS MAY 3 – WED MAY 9
THU
OSCAR WINNER
Straining to Love
Boys will be boys?
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN:
Directed by Lynne Ramsay. Written by
Ramsay and Rory Kinnear, based on the novel
by Lionel Shriver. Cinematographer, Seamus
McGarvey. Music, Johnny Greenwood. Editor,
Joe Bini. Starring Tilda Swinton, John C.
Reilly and Ezra Miller. Oscilloscope Pictures,
2012. R. 112 minutes. 00011
K
evin, the sullen-faced fi rst child
of wealthy parents, is a piece of
work. As a baby, he screams so
fi ercely that his mother fi nds a jackhammer
soothing; as a toddler, he’s resistant to
everything; as a teen, he’s destructive
and aggressively surly. There’s nothing
redeeming about the kid, but his father,
Franklin (John C. Reilly), sees nothing
wrong. It’s just how boys are, right?
Franklin, a warm but absent father, is a
malign presence simply because he doesn’t
do anything. Tilda Swinton’s Eva, a former
travel writer now settled in the suburbs,
carries the fi lm and the family. She strains
to love Kevin, but no bond exists between
mother and child. Something else fi lls that
space — something sharp and acidic.
Kevin, beautifully shot by Seamus
McGarvey and scored with eerie perfection
by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood, is
a creepy, often affecting fi lm, unsparing
in its look at a broken family playing at
being whole. Director Lynne Ramsay
(Ratcatcher), who wrote the screenplay
with her husband, knows her way around
moral ambiguity, and has a compelling
sense for fascinating characters who are
far from traditionally likeable. In Morvern
Callar, Samantha Morton did terrible
things, but Ramsay showed them to us
with a straightforwardness that began to
look like sympathy, wrapping Morvern’s
story in sound and sun in a way that put
her fl aws on glorious display.
Morvern Callar is an ambiguous fi lm;
We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on
Lionel Shriver’s novel, works at being
ambiguous, but its lack of judgment feels
programmed, the story plotted to divide
the audience with questions: If Kevin
is a monster, was he born that way, or
did lacking his mother’s love make him
so? If Eva couldn’t love her son, is she
the monster? And then, as a secondary
question: Why is it all about Eva? What
about absent, smiling Franklin?
All the questions are valid and
answerless, even as they feel too
surface-level, basic questions directed
at the relatively taboo topic of imperfect
mothers who don’t place children above
all other worldly concerns. (See also:
Ayelet Waldman saying she loves her
husband more than her kids; the scorn and
skepticism directed at women who don’t
wish to procreate.)
Kevin frustrates because it gets close
to something dark and diffi cult, then amps
the stakes in a way that undercuts the fi lm’s
effectiveness. Kevin isn’t just a diffi cult,
distant child; he’s cruel and violent (why
anyone would let this kid take up archery
as a hobby is a whole other matter). Eva
isn’t just a mother struggling to love her
son; she’s a woman who used to freely
travel the globe and write bestsellers, now
chafi ng at familiar ties. The specifi cs are so
overwrought, they shrink the fi lm’s scope,
clouding the bigger questions: What kind
of society teaches “Boys will be boys?”
Why isn’t the father equally responsible?
Why are women still expected to be the
ones who give up their previous lives
for their children? Somewhere in Kevin,
there’s an argument, intentional or not, for
not expecting all women to be mothers.
(Some will also see it as highly effective
birth control.)
But as it is, the fi lm often plays out like
an exercise in determining culpability, and
in seeing what the after-fi lm discussion
reveals about your friends. Who hates
Eva? Who fully blames Kevin? How is it
that Tilda Swinton is so astonishing that
anything she’s in is worth watching? That
last question might be the least answerable
of the bunch.
ew
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9:25*
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