Book Review: A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold

Rating: B/ Reading A Mother’s Reckoning, I was reminded of a line in the novel Little Children by Tom Perrotta where May, the mother of a middle-aged child molester, knows on some level that her son is a monster, but she finds that she cannot flip the switch in her mind and stop loving him. Books don’t get more ripped from the headlines than this memoir by Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the shooters at Columbine. As everybody who doesn’t live under a rock knows already, Columbine was one of the first large scale and highly publicized school shootings in the U.S.

Movie Review: Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Rating: B/  I knew next to nothing about Kubo and the Two Strings going in, and I probably wouldn’t have even watched it at all had my dad not bought a copy for my sister on her 13th birthday. I had seen a few ads and knew it had a monkey in it, but overall my interest was minimal. While Kubo and the Two Strings’ plot structure is not the most original (it features a pretty standard heroes’ journey arc where Kubo picks up a couple of unlikely companions and moves from place to place trying to find items with magical properties that will help him fight an ancient evil,) it is visually astonishing and peppered with some entertaining characters and funny dialogue.

Movie Review: Glassland (2014)

Rating: A/ From the title I thought this movie was about methamphetamine, since ‘glass’ is a synonym for crystal meth. It turned out to be about a young man’s mother with a pretty serious alcohol problem. In fact, Jean (Toni Collette) has hit the bottle so hard that she’s slowly killing herself, and her ever-faithful son John (Jack Reynor) both tirelessly cares for her and enables her.

Movie Review: Little Otik (2000)

Rating: C/ I remember when I was about eleven, I saw a trailer for a Jan Svankmajer film called Lunacy, which involved dancing pieces of raw meat interspersed with people screaming/ being tortured. It scared me quite a bit, and left me with no desire to see the entirety of the movie. Indeed, Svankmajer is one of those filmmakers, like David Lynch or John Waters, who seems to absolutely pride himself at being weirder than everyone else. After I saw Alice, his supremely creepy take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I was curious to see what other screwed-up little creations he had cooked up in his twisted brain.

Movie Review: Room (2015)

    Rating: A-/ Room is a pleasant surprise; a film that lives up to the novel on which it was based. Most of this is due to the two fabulous leading performances, including some of the best child acting I’ve seen in ages by Jacob Tremblay, who plays Jack, the five year old protagonist. While Brie Larson, as Jack’s mother, nabbed a best leading actress Oscar for her role, I couldn’t help but think Tremblay should have gone home with one of those suckers. As my dad, who reluctantly saw this movie with my mom and I, said, “To Hell with Leonardo DiCaprio. Give this kid an Oscar!”

Movie Review: Little Children (2006)

Rating: B+/ So, is the movie called Little Children because the sex offender played by Jackie Earle Haley has a thing for little children or because all the adult characters in the movie act like little children, self-obsessed and bickering? The jury’s still out on that. While the main plotline concerning extramarital affairs and upper-class ennui in an affluent suburban neighborhood is dark and distressing enough, I found the subplot following a child abuser and exhibitionist moving into his mothers’ house after being released from prison (the superior thread by far) absolutely harrowing. Did this movie really make me feel compassion for a guy who gets his kicks flashing his weenie at little kids? What does that say about the film’s aptitude for puzzling moral ambiguity? Moreover, what does it say about me?

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

Rating: B/  Oh, Franklin. you should have worn the damned condom!

Okay, so maybe Eva Khachaturian wasn’t meant to be a mother. But is she responsible for making her son a monster? Society seems to think so. In the wake of a horrific attack orchestrated by Kevin, a sadistic fifteen-year-old psychopath, Eva (Tilda Swinton) is heckled on the street and sometimes outright attacked by people who lost their loved ones in the tragedy.

    In a swirl of fever dream-like memories, past becomes present, and Eva remembers when her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) and kids Kevin and Celie (Ezra Miller and Ashley Gerasimovich) were still with her. Eva never seemed to really want Kevin, a vile, evil, perpetually incontinent child turned killer teen who mind-fucked his mother from a very early age, but the real question is whether Eva could stop the direction her son was going.

   Franklin, a happy guy in denial of Kevin’s true nature, condemns Eva for not connecting with her little moppet, and Kevin simultaneously gaslights Eva and turns Eva and her well-meaning but dopey husband against each other. Kevin might seem like a child of Satan or some other supernatural incarnate, but really he’s like thousands of other children in the world who really don’t seem to have a conscience- and who better to blame than the boy’s own mother?

Anyone who has seen filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher knows she has a propensity for both beautiful cinematography and grueling bleakness. We Need to Talk About Kevin, based on the best-selling novel by the same title by Lionel Shriver, is no exception. The film is intensely visual, with a kind of stream-of-consciousness style, especially around the beginning, and benefits from an outstanding performance by Tilda Swinton as the complex Eva.

Eva seems alternately like a bad mother and all-around ice queen and a woman trying to do best by her family, and one must wonder if her memory (and by extension, the whole movie’s narrative) is reliable as she paints a terrifying portrait of Kevin literally from babyhood to present day. The movie asks the question of whether we can always blame the parents of these children for the kids’ evil actions or if some youngsters are just bad eggs.

The answer to this question is often ambiguous here, but ultimately we decide that no, we can’t ultimately blame Eva for how ‘widdle Kevin’ turned out. It brings up the aged-old question of ‘nature vs. nurture’ in a new and interesting way, and packs a hell of a wallop in the process. This movie will make you think twice about going off the pill and make you wonder if having a little ball of joy of your own is overrated.

The part near the end of the movie at the school when Kevin’s plan goes full circle makes me think of a extra I saw on my parents’ DVD of the original Halloween. Donald Pleasence, who played Sam Loomis, told the director that he could play the sequence when Myers falls out the window after getting shot and somehow escapes into thin air one of two ways; ‘Oh my God, he’s gone’ or ‘I knew this would happen.’ Ultimately they decided on the latter because the former would be, well, too much.

That’s what I think of when I see Eva’s expression as she eyes the bicycle locks Kevin previously ordered in the mail on the doors of the school auditorium. Her expression is less a look of shocked horror as it is a look of resignation. I knew this would happen. On one hand, you wonder why Eva didn’t get her son major psychological help right off the bat, but on the other, could she really of prevented Kevin’s insanity if she had? After all, when you have a blissfully ignorant husband who refuses to believe your son has a problem, how are you going to get an evaluation carried out without his blessing?

All in all, We Need to Talk About Kevin is kind of like watching a train wreck, albeit a visually striking one with a handful of outstanding shots. It makes us women, whether we plan to be mothers or not, wonder how far maternal love goes and if you can be held culpable simply for not loving your child enough. Is it possible to love a monster? I think so. People do it all the time.

But for someone like Eva who obviously didn’t want to be a mother in the first place, her failure to love her son was ultimately ammunition for her evil child to use against her. Eva’s coldness is not an excuse for Kevin’s behavior anymore than Kevin being a difficult baby is an excuse for Eva to make very little effort with her offspring. One persons’ blame does not cancel the others’ out. But that’s not enough for other parent not to convince themselves that they could do better. Given the circumstances, could you?

 

Child’s Pose (2013)

Ah, to be rich, dysfunctional, and morally bankrupt. In Child’s Pose, Cornelia (Luminita Keneres), a wealthy Romanian divorcee,  yearns to exercise control over her adult son Bardu (Bogdan Dumitrache)’s life. Ironically, it is when tragedy strikes and Bardu kills a young boy with his automobile while speeding and tailgating another car that Cornelia gets the ultimate opportunity to mommy him back into her grasp.

The child, a fourteen year old, is from a low  income neighborhood, and his enraged uncle threatens violence against Cornelia and her son, exclaiming, “They don’t care about us.” Who is he referring to? The poor, of course, those not fortunate enough to employ maids to clean their posh apartments and wear nice clothing and jewelry. And the sad thing is, he’s mostly right.

The fussy Bardu cares more about the needle he is injected with proceeding the accident than the loss of the boy’s life, while for Cornelia, it’s never been about the child. She just wants to keep her apathetic rich kid son out of a slam me in the ass prison and reassert her role as #1 woman in his life. Passing bribes around like hot potatoes should do the trick, right?

It’s not until Corneila, Bardu, and Bardu’s young wife Carmen (Ilinca Goia) really encounter the boy’s grief stricken family face to face that they really understand the damage that has been wrought, leading to a fleeting moment of redemption. Because it was really about the kid all along, not the money, not the rich family’s dignity, not Bardu going to  prison. Bardu was negligent and that negligence cost another family their oldest child.

This moment; when Cornelia faces the victim’s grieving parents, is heartbreaking without being overwrought. as the encounter causes both Cornelia and the parents of the dead kid to break down in tears and defeat. Along with the social commentary plot (the gap between the rich and poor in Romania, and everywhere,) we see  just how much the horrid yet tragic Cornelia needs validation from her son, who responds with hatred and practiced apathy.

 Child’s Pose is a film for patient audiences, audiences who are content to see a story unfurl, not burst forth with a crackle and a pop. There is no violence, no insane plot twists, no special effects. Instead we get a look at a diseased mother son relationship with a few clues as to how it came to be that way. The actors knock it out of the ballpark, Luminita Gheorghiu gives a mesmerizing lead performance as a woman desperate for love from her child for whom life is a series of draining barters and exchanges.

He speaks with her eyes, her face remaining an impassive mask until the film’s final minutes. The beauty in this film is although the leads are horrible people, the ending gives them a glimmer of redemption. The performances also lend humanity to people for whom money is love, and love cash to be bartered.

The washed out colors provide a grim visual scheme, as the camera lingers on the character’s faces, waiting for a reaction, maybe an outburst, in their dull, listless faces. Who is the child of the film’s title? The dead boy? The baby Bardu shirks having with his frustrated wife? Or maybe Bardu himself is the child, unwilling or unable to face up to his actions. Maybe too much exorbitant wealth and not enough real life experience makes children of us all.

Nothing shocking or tawdry here, just good dialogue driven drama about the price of thinking that since you have money and social status, nothing can touch you. For 3/4 of the movie, the victim is hardly mentioned, his name merely whispered and followed by talk of dollars and debts. Remember when Jesus said ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to Heaven?’ I don’t pay much credence to these things, but the same is true here. But the corrupt, tangled family unit might be closer to heaven by the end of this movie than they were 112 minutes ago.

Philomena (2013)

I know I’m probably a little late getting onto the bandwagon, but Judi Dench is an amazing actress! Her eyes are like twin oceans that reflect her character’s feelings, whether stormy or sunny, to an absolute tee. And although some people might find Stephen Frears’ biopic drama Philomena trite or predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed and it’s touching tribute to motherhood. Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) is a simple woman- kind, a little eccentric, and privy to the simple joys that life provides. What she lacks in worldliness she makes up for in good cheer and her big heart.

But something in Philomena’s past haunts her well into her twilight years. As a girl, Philomena had a little boy named Anthony who was taken from her and given to an American couple by the nuns that kept her as an indentured servant to work off her sins as an unwed mother. Not exactly living out the example of Christ, these nuns have refused to tell her over a span of dozens of years what became of Anthony, and despite being the mother of another grown child, a daughter, Philomena’s heart aches to discover Anthony’s whereabouts and to involve him in her life.

That’s where Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan,) a disgraced journalist, comes in. Against his own better judgement, the cynical Martin is recruited by Philomena’s daughter Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin) to locate Anthony and reunite him with his aged mother. Thus, begins a funny, sad, and bittersweet journey to Ireland, Philomena’s birthplace, the U.S., and finally, home again (hopefully with son in tow.) On the way Philomena challenges Martin’s atheism and grim viewpoint on life in general, and Martin is gradually buoyed by Philomena’s infectious attitude.

If you enjoy well-acted, gently quirky and sweetly predictable British dramedies that showcase the best humanity has to offer and heart-tugging plots, this movie is for you. I know what I like, and I’ve always enjoyed these kinds of movies, which seem soft and cozy enough to lull you to a peasant catharsis but real enough (compared to their U.S. counterparts) to take seriously. They’re the movie equivalent of comfort food, with laughs and tears along the way.

“Philomena” is sad, but not in the nihilistic soul-crushing way a Von Trier movie is sad. It is funny, but not in the way a crude teen comedy is funny. It has just enough reality to make you think and just enough fantasy (like the prerequisite and entirely fabricated scene where Coogan gives his speech about decency and basic human rights to the geriatric, cold-hearted nun (Barbara Jefford) that sent Philomena’s son away in the first place and not an eye is dry in the house) to be warm and familiar, like a well-worn blanket.

Yet, despite the familiar territory and the paper-thin supporting characters (Including Game of Thrones‘ Michelle Fairley as Martin’s implausibly soulless editor, and Martin’s wife (Simone Lahbib), who appears at the beginning to complain about his emotional unavailability and scarcely seen or heard from again), the movie works, and contains a handful of genuinely touching moments that will move you to tears.

If “Philomena”‘s intent was to move me, it has duly succeeded. If it’s intent was, also, to make me curious about the real Martin Sixsmith’s book, ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee,’ it has succeeded in this regard too. “Philomena” won’t rock anyone’s world with particularly innovative filmmaking and storytelling, but can’t us softies have our comfort food to watch as well as to eat and drink? For a taste of bittersweet, heartwarming, and maybe a little formulaic British cinema, look no further.

Mommy (2014)

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” uttered by the titular killer Norman Bates in “Psycho,” remains one of the most iconic lines of all time. But can a boy’s best friend also be his worst enemy? Can the love between a mother and son become so tangled, so deeply dependent that their bond becomes detrimental to them both? In Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy,” loud-mouthed white-trash widow Diane Despres (Anne Dorval) becomes the sole caretaker of her mentally ill fourteen-year-old son Steve (Antoine-Oliver Pilon) when the troubled youngster is released from an institution for disturbed children.

Steve is, simply put, out of control, and we witness his whacked-out rages first-hand almost immediately. His mother glibly enables his psychotic behavior to the point of almost encouraging it, and there is an incestuous subtext between the two that several times ceases to be subtext at all (such as the scene where the lad puts on eyeliner, turns up his tunes and gropes his mother’s breasts in front of a curious onlooker.)

Steve and Diane get a new lease on life when a timid woman (Suzanne Clement) with a bit of a stuttering problem comes into their lives, bringing help and healing- if only temporarily. Things are complicated by a lawsuit based on the damaging effects of a fire the boy started in the institution. Suzanne adds some degree of stability to a home rife with dysfunction and violence- but can people this damaged be healed?

“Mommy” is elevated above an okay family-values-gone-awry/oedipal complex movie by the three outstanding lead performances. Anne Dorval is magnificent in an acting job that will enrage you into wanting to slap her smug face and then break your heart. Antoine-Oliver Pilon is terrifying as a volatile teen whose mood vacillates on the turn of a dime, and Suzanne Clement provides steady support as a character who is under reactionary and strange at best, totally underwritten at worse.

Indeed, the stammering Kyla doesn’t seem to have any reaction whatsoever to the destructive love that Steve and Diane share; she is just there to help. This lack of judgment should be inspiring but instead seems to have come directly out of the twilight zone. How long could you handle Steve’s insane antics without cracking? The only moment where Kyla hints at deeper levels of trauma is her attack on the jeering Steve; the rest of the time she’s pretty fucking caviler about a family dynamic that would leave most running for the hills.

Unfortunately, the worst thing about this movie is the 1:1 aspect ratio (a perfect square,) which is jarring and distracting and takes away attention from an effective film. The filmmaker, Dolan insisted that it was more ‘intimate’ this way, but I suspect most viewers are so used to the majority of or all the screen being filled up that this is merely distraction.

Despite a lack a likable characters, “Mommy” is compelling (mostly due to its stellar acting) and even grueling. Of course it can not portray in it’s entirety the horror of caring for a severely emotionally disturbed kid, but it provides a honest (if not exactly hopeful) look at when love is not enough to sustain parent and child. The film itself is a dark, heart wrenching ride (portraying the depths of dysfunction between a deeply damaged woman and her disturbed son,) but Anne Dorval particularly deserves all the awards she gets. Freud would be pleased.

Note- The bright-light film critic Xan Brooks referred to “Mommy” as a ‘boisterous Oedipal Comedy.’ What. the. Fuck. Did we watch the same movie? This film was grim and depressing from beginning to end. Very little ‘comedy’ to it other than bemused mortification.