Sometimes Zuzu's petals are all you have to hold onto. That's the underlying message of We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lynne Ramsey's remarkable allegory on the transcendent nature of relationships. At first glance, it would seem that Kevin is yet another installment in the pantheon of post-modern films intent upon assaulting the human desire to give meaning to the world. Indeed, Kevin is a relentless film that gives its audience few opportunities to come up for air from the depths of anguish to which it plummets.

Yet it is in those infrequent instances of relief, conversion and mercy that the film finds its identity and direction. Kevin is a story of hope for a new millennium, an It's a Wonderful Life in the age of school shootings and planes crashing into buildings -- a world-weary world that has been bombarded by nihilistic themes in their narratives for the better part of a century. It is a world where any attempts to offer a message of mercy, conversion and redemption must be done deftly and authentically, because at the end of the day, sometimes the community won't rally around you and more often than not Mr. Potter carries the day.

We sprang into action. Luckily, we could dip buckets into a half-filled hot tub in the basement and haul them upstairs for flushing toilets. We got out the candles and the hurricane lanterns, one so old it barely worked, a relict from hurricanes during my own childhood. My husband ran out onto the deck and started piling wood into a leather carrier, lugging it indoors -- along with a blast of wet, cold air.