I recently watched the 2011 film ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ (directed by Lynne Ramsay). It’s based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Lionel Shriver, and follows the events before, and the aftermath of, a fictional school shooting by a teenager called Kevin Khatchadourian. It uses a non-linear plot that gradually unravels throughout the course of the film, and I found that the sound design by Paul Davies (also responsible for the sound on ‘You Were Never Really Here’) plays an essential part in this.
The story is mainly told from the perspective of Kevin’s mother, Eva. The very first shot is a slow zoom on a curtain next an open door, being blown gently by the wind. We can hear the sound of sprinklers, and although the audience doesn’t know it yet, we will see this shot and hear this sound again later in the film, and it serves as a motif to highlight Kevin’s horrific actions. This shot is later shown to be part of a scene where Eva walks into the family home after witnessing the aftermath of Kevin’s attack, and finds her husband and daughter also dead in the garden, with the sprinkler left on.
The sprinkler sound appears many times throughout the film. For instance, when Eva finds that Kevin has painted and drawn all over the walls and surfaces of her study, the sound comes back. It seems to happen most of the time that Kevin does something he knows he is not supposed to, and is definitely linked to his actions.
Another recurring sound is one of people screaming. It first happens towards the end of the slow zoom, before the film cuts to Eva (presumably before Kevin was born) at La Tomatina festival in Buñol, Valencia; a bizarre festival where large crowds of people gather together and throw tomatoes at each other. The imagery and sound work together really well in this scene, both foreshadowing later events in the film. There is the obvious visual symbolism of people drowning in blood, however the sound design is really what tells the story in this shot. It transforms from the happy sounds of the crowd having a good time, to a more sinister sound, washed in reverb, of people screaming again. This is the sound that comes up later in the film when Eva arrives at the school to find teenagers being taken out on stretchers after Kevin has shot them with his bow and arrow.
These are only two examples from the first minute of the film of sound that reoccur and help move the plot along, and I think the sound design is essential to the making the film what it is.
I recently read an article by Brett Ashleigh on the Screen Queens website that argues that the sound design tells the story through a feminine perspective (‘écoute féminine’, as Ashleigh describes it), which mirrors the plot as it is shown mostly through Eva’s eyes. Ashleigh argues that the sound design disengages from the traditional patriarchal linear structure which an audience would usually expect, and instead uses a feminist approach to compliment the film. What she means by this is that it “has the ability to display a narrative that depends on emotional and affective techniques rather than those based in language”.
In a way, I can understand where she is coming from – the story is very non-linear and does rely on emotion-based storytelling rather than one straight narrative. It is also shown from the feminine perspective of Eva, rather than the masculine perspective of Kevin. I can certainly see that the film can be said to be made from a feminine perspective – however, does that mean the sound design is too? I find it slightly confusing to assign linear storytelling to the patriarchy and then assign emotion based, non-linear story telling to feminism. Why are these different types of narratives being assigned different genders? I never really feel like I get a solid answer from Ashleigh’s article – she does make many points as to how the film puts you in Eva’s perspective, and how the soundtrack can help emphasise it, but we’re never told exactly why a non-linear storyline is particularly feminine. I don’t really like to speak on behalf of women, but I find it to be a bit patronising to put these two types of storytelling into different (gendered) boxes.
However, as I did mention, Ashleigh does give a few good reasons as to why the sound design can be considered part of a larger feminist piece of art. For example, when Eva walks into her house, hears the sprinkler and goes outside to see her murdered husband and daughter, the sound of the sprinkler remains outside of the real world of the film to an extent. As Ashleigh describes, “we are once again reminded that we are witnessing Eva’s subjective memory, portraying things not as they truly were, but as she has orchestrated in her mind”. This means that through the sprinkler sound the film is putting us in Eva’s shoes, making the plot “essentially female”. So, whilst I disagree with some parts of Ashleigh’s analysis, I can agree that the soundtrack is part of a film which shows the childhood of a school shooter through the feminine perspective of his mother. However, I still disagree that certain types of narrative can be inherently feminine or masculine. (It’s a film I don’t like, but Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ uses a very non-linear narrative, and would we argue it is from a particularly feminine perspective?)
Bibliography
- Ashleigh, B. (2016) A feminist approach to sound in we need to talk about Kevin, Screen Queens. Available at: https://screen-queens.com/2016/11/17/a-feminist-approach-to-sound-in-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin/ (Accessed: October 9, 2022).