One of the most important elements of movies focusing on families is how children end up different from their parents. Both "A Summer Place" and "The Graduate" showed the younger generation displeased with the parents' decadence and hypocrisy. Lynne Ramsay later gave us the gritty "We Need to Talk About Kevin", about a boy who develops increasingly manipulative and sociopathic tendencies as he ages.
The movie never preaches or moralizes. It's told from the mom's point of view as she sees her son's cruel streak start to damage her family. With a non-linear plot, Ramsay manages to tell much of the story without words, as the ugly conclusion slowly approaches.
It's an impressive piece of work, but definitely not for the fainthearted. Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller put on fine performances.
"All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (commonly attributed to Anton Chekhov, although I don't know if he's the one who originally said it)
The movie never preaches or moralizes. It's told from the mom's point of view as she sees her son's cruel streak start to damage her family. With a non-linear plot, Ramsay manages to tell much of the story without words, as the ugly conclusion slowly approaches.
It's an impressive piece of work, but definitely not for the fainthearted. Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller put on fine performances.
"All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (commonly attributed to Anton Chekhov, although I don't know if he's the one who originally said it)