We Need to Talk About Kevin.......and Literary Fiction, of Course

     Some day, I'll blog about something that has nothing to do with movies and won't hint at my bad habit of watching them during school nights...but today is not that day. While procrastinating yet again on schoolwork, I stumbled upon We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I think I've found that rare gem of a film, one that practically no one's ever heard of, that just might fit that elusive definition of a literary fiction (if it were a movie, that is). There is just something about how this movie was shot, the actors involved in it, and the plot that it was centered on, that really set a new standard for all movies out there...this film made me think, it made me wonder about the human condition and how external and internal forces influence us in ways we can't imagine. It's nothing like your summer blockbuster, which comes out every summer and gets billions of dollars in sales. People will talk about it in the next couple of weeks, the news will be applauding its financial success, but after a few years-- maybe even after a few months-- no one will remember the main character. Or the plot. What was the movie even about?? Don't look at me, that stuff is too mainstream for my taste. That is a perfect example of a commercial fiction--er, I mean movie. You get the idea. But We Need to Talk About Kevin will surpass the obstacle of time, and maybe years from now people will finally watch this film and uncover the great insight it offers about our messed-up era we call Post-Modernism. The future generations can infer our beliefs of the human condition and the inescapable flaws we're presented with. The future high school students will analyze this movie as much as we did with Frankenstein, if not more. And that, reader, is what finally made me able to differentiate literary and commercial fiction. 

     But enough about the differences; fiction is fiction, and whether it's literary or commercial, if it's pulled off well then everyone can enjoy it, right? Well, We Need to Talk About Kevin was a variety of things; it was artistic, it was gritty, it was subtle, and it was downright horrifying. I've seen my fair share of scary movies, but this psychological twister really pushes all the buttons. I don't want to give the whole plot away, but I also have a hard time shutting my mouth about these types of things, so read at your own risk. The movie is centered around a young couple who recently got married; the two love traveling and doing lovey-dovey couple things together, etc. etc.-- think of it as an extended, 2-year honeymoon. Of course, at one point, the woman (named Eva) gets an unexpected pregnancy. The father, Franklin, is overjoyed; the mother is not. She spends the nine months of the pregnancy wallowing right up until the very end, when she gives birth to a baby boy named Kevin. Here is where all notion of normalcy ends.

     

     We need to talk about Kevin. Why? Because he is born with an innate hatred towards his mother, and his mother only. He has no problem with the father, or any other living being for that matter, except for the woman who gave him life. After birth, Eva actually does a slow turnaround about the idea of having kids, and has just begun to accept her new role as a mother with cautious enthusiasm, but this enthusiasm is short-lived. As the child gets older, it becomes more and more apparent to Eva that Kevin tries his very best to spite, bother, annoy, physically and mentally hurt the mother; nothing she would say or do would lessen this hatred within him. But when the father was around, Kevin would do a complete 180; he turned into the adorable 5 year-old that wanted to play with paper planes and hug his daddy, all in front of the boggled, exhausted mother. Things don't look up as he becomes a teenager; at this point the mother conveys no love nor interest for her son, and he returns this in kind. He still does subtle things to annoy her, such as leave his room a mess, watch pornography when she's around-- any horrible thing you can think of that a teenager could do, he's probably done in the movie. 

     Eva, on the other hand, thinks she's going crazy. She keeps telling her husband that Kevin doesn't act right around her, as if he wasn't even her son, and Franklin doesn't believe a word she says; this is justified from his perspective, since Kevin acts like the perfect teenager around him. All of these psychological torments lead up to a final, desperate act by Kevin to really show the world how much he hates his mother; he locks down the school during a pep rally and starts shooting at random students on site. This was the final straw, and he's sent to jail for his actions. Now, the last scene is the most interesting of all. The son finally lets all of his emotions out during a jail confession about how he's had this unexplainable ache to harass his mother since he was born. He confesses that he used to know why he wanted to kill all those students, but now he isn't sure he remembers. And in that moment, Eva (who was in the confession room with him) did an unexplainable thing; she hugs her son for the first, and probably only time. 

     I didn't give everything away, but even from the crude summary all you think is "Whaaaaaaat? did I miss something?" But that's exactly how it ends: in their embrace. These two seemingly sworn enemies, hugged it out, as if nothing ever happened in those 18 years of purgatory in raising a child that does nothing but hate you back. But what I got out of this movie was a lot more than goosebumps for the actor Kevin's chilling performance, or the massive bloodshed throughout the latter half of the movie; it was how seemingly plausible this could all be. The movie raises the controversy of nature versus nurture, battling both sides against each other upon analyzing Kevin's upbringing. What was it that really made him hate the mother? Was it something within those nine months prior to conception that contributed to his behavior? Was it purely by environment alone? It also questions the strength of that bond between mother and child. Can it persist even the most heinous of crimes? Is this love innate, or is it learned? The director seemed to have at least one concrete idea in mind when answering these questions: some mothers will love and support their children even if her children don't deserve it. This is displayed through the hug that Eva gives to her son in the end of the movie, but this is solely from one perspective. Many others claim that the hug was her final ironic act as a mother, and that she was actually resolved to let go of her monster instead of her child in giving that hug. 

  

     Then there's Kevin himself. The director mixes nature and nurture in this character to make him what he is, and what can we deduce of this? Maybe sometimes hatred is innate in children, and that it must be unlearned a certain way for the child to properly love his parent? Or that the life source is just as important, if not more important, than the creation itself in determining its fate? It twists the societal impression that children are born as a blank slate, and that mothers have no influence on the behavior of the child. This movie contradicts our ideas or parenthood into something quite nasty and uncomfortable instead of loving and supporting. As I sat back when the credits rolled, I created my own doubts in my head. What would happen if I didn't love my child because it was ugly? What if my child didn't want me? What if, what if, what if...I wasn't lying when I told you this movie made me think. Sure, the whole plot could have been a dramatization  that might never actually happen in real life, but its rooted in questions that many parents may have when they want to start a family. These what ifs are what make this movie worth your time; it's bold and unforgiving when it displays not the good, but the dark side of both children and parenthood.