Rhyme et Reason

Tilda Swinton is lifted up by a swarm of people covered in red - presumably bits of tomato like the annual “La Tomatina” in Spain. She plays Eva, a woman who loves to travel and somehow gets stuck in the suburbs after living in New York City and becoming pregnant with Kevin. Tomatoes and red paint pop up in the movie time and time again. It symbolizes blood and the violence that Kevin has wreaked, in what is foreshadowed to be a Columbine-like massacre.

Kevin, the dark haired boy with a dark nature, is difficult from a very young age. He manages to win over his father while he makes his mother’s life hell. While Eva tries to explain the situation to her husband, he disregards what she says and lavishes attention on his ungrateful son.

If you’ve ever seen The Good Son, with Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood, you will see similarities between Culkin’s character Henry and Kevin. Whereas Henry dies at a young age, after being discovered as a psychotic kid, Kevin goes on to high school.

Throughout the film, flashbacks make it difficult to piece together what exactly went wrong. Kevin’s actions are portrayed as being more nature than nurture. Eva does her best to have patience with him and it runs out only once, when she throws him after he purposefully pushes her buttons, and he breaks his arm. He lies to his father about the incident, always holding it over Eva.

The final scenes in the movie conclude what the flashbacks have been alluding to. It explains the current situation, two years in the future, where Eva works at a travel agency, vicariously living through the posters in the office of distant locations.

This movie is dark, has sparse dialogue, and doesn’t offer any solutions for acts of violence. It’s a good movie to see if you want to see some amazing acting. The actors who play Kevin, from toddler, to kid, to 16 year old, are fantastic, along with the performances by Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly. Even though Reilly’s last performance in Carnage was basically the same character. Read our review of Carnage here.

I don’t understand this year’s Academy Award nominations. Swinton should be nominated for best actress.

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