WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Here lies the story of motherhood, told entirely from the mother's side of the glass. Turns out being a mum is not all flowers, unicorns, and hashtags — #proudmom, #ilovemylife. The vision of parenthood sold to us by social media and television is idyllic and scrubbed clean of anything evil, whereas the reality also contains episodes of sorrow, depression, and prolonged tiredness that nobody posts about.

We discover, alongside Eva (Tilda Swinton), that her newborn — and later her toddler son — hates her. And we wonder: can such a pure being actually hate someone? Later it crossed my mind that yes, he did hate her. With purity.

We watch Kevin (Ezra Miller) grow up into a teenager who still hates his mother — though by now he has also grown to hate everything else, and learned some new tricks along the way. On the whole, the hateful feeling directed at his mother sort of blends into the background noise of his general contempt for the world.

This story is so wicked that at some point I found myself wondering whether Kevin didn't hate and love his mother simultaneously — both in a capacity beyond what our society considers acceptable. He wasn't particularly nice to her. But he also didn't seem to want to share her with anyone else, in which he succeeded, in the end, completely. To draw such a thin line between love and hate — Ramsay plays on our feelings like a violin.

I found the name Eva very fitting. The first woman, the original sinner, the first mother — it widens the story's perspective to include every mother going back to the beginning of time. It tells you that you don't need to be perfect, and shows how difficult the task of raising a child actually is. And finally, it points out that regardless of your endless efforts, you can still end up the mother of a monster. Not everyone can be Maria. And in the end, we are responsible only for ourselves.