As he gets older, he refuses to speak, refuses to allow himself to be potty trained, and asserts a manipulative dominance over his mother that his doting, Pollyannaish father Franklin (John C. As a baby, he rarely ceases crying, to the point where a frazzled Eva seeks refuge from the noise by walking him by construction sites, where the sound of the jackhammer five feet away provides momentary relief. But what happens when everything ugly about the world is embodied in the son, when he's the source of the "sin and woe" that Phillips sings about over his ethereal zither? If the bond between mother and son becomes tenuous or broken, is that the result of his evil deeds, or the cause of them?ĭirector Lynne Ramsay's new film, We Need to Talk About Kevin, returns again and again to Phillips's song as it examines the relationship between Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) and her son Kevin (Ezra Miller), a boy troubled seemingly from birth. You always have been your mother's joy." Those words come from 1920s gospel singer Washington Phillips's "Mothers Last Word to Her Son," a hauntingly beautiful expression of the bittersweet bond between a mother and a son she knows she can no longer protect.
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