We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

> The use of flashbacks and parallelism in the structure of the film can be usefully explored. The film begins in the aftermath of the massacre, then flashes back to the events leading up to the massacre (including flashbacks to the beginnings of Franklin and Eva’s relationship). The complex inter-relationship of narrative timelines culminates in the massacre itself and then flashes forward to the meeting between Eva and Kevin one year after the killings. The effects of this complex structuring of time in the plot can be usefully explored by considering the opportunities it affords the storyteller for showing parallels between characters and events, and in raising questions about cause and effect.


> How exposition of the narrative occurs in the film can be an interesting source of inquiry. We are presented with fractured elements of a story at the beginning that we have to piece together with little indication of how to organise these into a chronological framework of time and space. The difficulty of doing this is compounded by the fact that there is a lack of expositional dialogue and conventional establish of narrative setting. The first three scenes are the net curtains blowing in the wind, the tomato festival and Eva waking up which all occur in very different places and times (which we discover later) but how we can organise these scenes into a story is restricted from us until much later in the film.


> Eva’s and Kevin’s characters provide many sources for inquiry, particularly in their position within the narrative. The questions about who is the film’s protagonist and antagonist, who is the ‘centre’ or initiator of the drama and how we are supposed to respond to the characters is complex and ambiguous at times. This complexity of character identification and function within the narrative is further complicated by the use of mirroring. The characters are made to look like each other and often display very similar expressions and body language… frequent graphic matches force a further comparison which suggests characters that are connected in more ways than simply a mother-son relationship.

Beginning Scene:

As an introduction to the narrative, the shot transitions from black to transparent curtains blowing from an open window, which immediately gives an eerie tonality due to the lack of humanity around the source, most likely caused by a situation. The camera pans into the curtain, teasing a form of resolution to the uncertainty, the colouring of the green and blues emphasising this. Since this is the beginning, we are unaware of the importance of this moment, since the editing of the film is shifted from chronological, showing the climax first in a way that could reflect Eva’s trauma. The light from the curtain brightens, acting itself as a transition to a festival of tomatoes, however the zoomed out shot looking down from people makes it confusing to understand the narrative instantly, causing active spectatorship. This transition is commonly used to indict flashbacks, which is what this scene entails, previewing Eva before she was married and childless, allowing the audience the comparison of life before and life after. The use of colour with this intro scene is critical to the symbolism, the contrast between the future and past scenes show how vastly different it changes and the vivid redness of the tomatoes foreshadows the extreme violence used later on.

The mass use of extra cast creates a claustrophobic feel, the video slowed down to create a false sense of reality, and a sense of terror to the unknown situation. Shots of Tilda being lifted where used to show her enjoyment with single life, the feeling of freedom. The extras eventually put her down, as if she is injured - similar to the children who are dragged injured out of the school hall. When pouring the tomatoes on her, it shows her to be drowning in the blood or sorrows , due to the climax of the narrative, a visual representation of her later psychological state. This then cuts to moving shots of symbolic misc-en-scene, her current status due to the past circumstances. 

Eva is shown waking up by a mid shot, the colouring of it red as if the light is being reflected through a red filter. Through medium paced shots, we are shown suggestive moments that reveal her characterisation, such as her appearance, when she hits her foot on the table by a lot of drugs, and panning across unwashed plates. From a mid-shot, we see Eva slide her feet across the hard wood floor, showing a lack of care in physicality, pulling on the door handle which immediately comes off and looking through a tainted with red stains window, confusing the audience. The symbolic use of the tomatoes is really against the previous, by using negative connotations due to ruining the exterior of her home. The vivid of the tomatoes against the white painted cottage highlights her house from the others and as an act of aggression, also gives her mental state the link to the past positive one in which she felt. 

School scene: 

To create a sense of tension, Eva is shown  searching in panic around, whilst crying out her son’s name. The surrounding of people and sirens creates an unnerving atmosphere, and due to previous circumstances the audience can guess what has happened. The sounding of a chainsaw is then followed by a shot of firefights cutting into the bicycle clamps, ones which Kevin previously put onto there. The drop of the bicycle clamps are in solitude, creating an impact, whilst an intense eerie sound of violins are used when zooming in on Eva as she moves closer, intensely watching. When the doors open, Kevin carelessly walks out - the audio confusing cheering for the screams of horror and reflecting Kevin’s mentality of his act of ‘heroism’. His lips are tugged up into a smirk and his facial expression shows a cockiness, showing that he believes he’s done good, whilst contrasting shots to the public shows them screaming in anguish. Kevin does not resist when being handcuffed by cops - too busy in the moment of glory, shown by the way in which he raises his hands as a surrender; freely and with a sense of dramatically. Above all the screams, we hear Kevin being slammed down onto the police car, the next action being more violently therefore conveying the actual reality of the situation. The moment when Kevin is visually aware of his guilt is when he turns to look back from inside the police car, to see his mother standing there in horror.