Logging

Film: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Spoiler alert. There is a subgenre of films that explore real-life monsters. Their angle tends to be - let's look at it from the awful person's perspective. Monster with Charlize Theron looks at a serial killer. Paradise Now looks at Hamas terrorists. Elephant looks at school shooters. For a short time, these seemed like interesting projects. I think what the filmmakers tend to discover about their subjects - they simply aren't very interesting characters. This may be the big secret about terrorists and serial killers and other such heinous creatures - that at their core - they just might be the most petty and small amongst us and who barely warrant any attention whatsoever. So, this is why Lynne Ramsay's first movie in ages feels totally unfresh and kinda unnecessary. The movie lacks the visual audacity of her other films and builds to this big reveal of the kid being a school mass murderer. I didn't know this going in. But not knowing or knowing, the movie is still very middle-of-the-road and pretty boring - both thematically and visually. My theory of what she was trying to get at - it was a story about a mother who doesn't love her child and only comes to love him once he's become this monster. If that sounds interesting to you, maybe check out the movie.

Ramsay's Ratcatcher justifiably drew comparisons to Malick's Badlands - both incredibly mature and assured first works. And like Malick, has been going downhill ever since. I wonder if she'll ever make a good movie again. It would not surprise me if she didn't.