THE NEST
***
Director: Sean Durkin
Screenplay: Sean Durkin
Principal cast:
Jude Law
Carrie Coon
Oona Roche
Charlie Shotwell
Wendy Crewson
Michael Culkin
Country: UK/Canada
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 107 mins.
Australian release date: 4 February 2021.
After an eight-year hiatus since his first feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene, director and writer Sean Durkin’s The Nest is a compelling matrimonial mind-game between a couple who are as different as the countries from which they come. It is a film that is as uneasy to watch as any thriller (although the only blood shed is metaphorical), while we watch the family begin to unravel when the dire circumstances in which they find themselves begin to coalesce. As with his previous feature, Durkin has an eerie way of making his viewers apprehensive, even though the events depicted do not seem to be wildly out of the ordinary. Initially, at least.
Set in 1986, Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is working in New York when he decides he wants to return to his homeland in the UK and re-join his former London firm. He convinces his old boss, Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin), that he has the necessary commercial acumen from his time in the USA to make a fortune for both of them. This is the time of the ‘Big Bang’, when Britain deregulated its financial markets, and entrepreneurs were making fortunes in the new ‘anything goes’ world. His American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), is reluctant to leave behind the comfortable life they have established in upstate New York, complaining that “this will be our fourth move in 10 years”. She’s a more down-to-earth person than Rory, an expert rider who spends her time training horses. Naturally, their two children, Sam (Oona Roche) and Ben (Charlie Shotwell), are thrown into this new life as well and they are none too happy about it either. Rory leases a centuries-old country manor in Sussex with grounds large enough for Allison to build a stable and enrols the children in exclusive private schools. The image he is creating, however, is primarily an illusion; he is, an Aussie might say, ‘full of bull’. As their financial situation becomes more serious, because Rory is unable to sustain such a grandiose lifestyle, his moods take on a sinister edge and the couple find their marriage facing increasing stresses. The secluded country manor house adds to the atmosphere of uncertainty and foreboding, yet Rory refuses to acknowledge the family’s increasingly dire pecuniary and personal straits.
Durkin wrote the screenplay of his psychological movie and it is quite an unusual plot. Apparently, he drew on his own experiences as a child who, although born in Canada, spent his formative years in England before his family moved to the USA, so he understands the discombobulation that comes with cultural change. His two leads are complex and have very different expectations about marital life and their own needs. They also come from very different backgrounds. Jude Law is exceptional as a man who is desperate to succeed (there are hints as to why he is so driven) and, when he begins to fail, cannot accept that he is unable to live up to his own expectations, which makes his character even more menacing. And yet, he somehow contrives to make Rory sympathetic, too. Carrie Coon excels, delivering a sterling performance as a woman who finds herself initially supporting her husband but becoming increasingly concerned as the scales fall from her eyes and she begins to understand that he is not all he makes himself out to be. Her motto seems to be, ‘when in doubt, light a cigarette’; this is the Eighties, after all! The sombre lighting and claustrophobic visuals of Hungarian DoP Mátyás Erdély (who shot the extraordinary Son Of Saul) add to the film’s unsettling atmosphere.
The Nest is an intelligent, thought-provoking film, a portrait of a disintegrating marriage that will stay with you after you leave the cinema. The ending may be too inconclusive for some but Rory and Allison’s predicament will get under your skin.
Screenplay: Sean Durkin
Principal cast:
Jude Law
Carrie Coon
Oona Roche
Charlie Shotwell
Wendy Crewson
Michael Culkin
Country: UK/Canada
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 107 mins.
Australian release date: 4 February 2021.
After an eight-year hiatus since his first feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene, director and writer Sean Durkin’s The Nest is a compelling matrimonial mind-game between a couple who are as different as the countries from which they come. It is a film that is as uneasy to watch as any thriller (although the only blood shed is metaphorical), while we watch the family begin to unravel when the dire circumstances in which they find themselves begin to coalesce. As with his previous feature, Durkin has an eerie way of making his viewers apprehensive, even though the events depicted do not seem to be wildly out of the ordinary. Initially, at least.
Set in 1986, Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is working in New York when he decides he wants to return to his homeland in the UK and re-join his former London firm. He convinces his old boss, Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin), that he has the necessary commercial acumen from his time in the USA to make a fortune for both of them. This is the time of the ‘Big Bang’, when Britain deregulated its financial markets, and entrepreneurs were making fortunes in the new ‘anything goes’ world. His American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), is reluctant to leave behind the comfortable life they have established in upstate New York, complaining that “this will be our fourth move in 10 years”. She’s a more down-to-earth person than Rory, an expert rider who spends her time training horses. Naturally, their two children, Sam (Oona Roche) and Ben (Charlie Shotwell), are thrown into this new life as well and they are none too happy about it either. Rory leases a centuries-old country manor in Sussex with grounds large enough for Allison to build a stable and enrols the children in exclusive private schools. The image he is creating, however, is primarily an illusion; he is, an Aussie might say, ‘full of bull’. As their financial situation becomes more serious, because Rory is unable to sustain such a grandiose lifestyle, his moods take on a sinister edge and the couple find their marriage facing increasing stresses. The secluded country manor house adds to the atmosphere of uncertainty and foreboding, yet Rory refuses to acknowledge the family’s increasingly dire pecuniary and personal straits.
Durkin wrote the screenplay of his psychological movie and it is quite an unusual plot. Apparently, he drew on his own experiences as a child who, although born in Canada, spent his formative years in England before his family moved to the USA, so he understands the discombobulation that comes with cultural change. His two leads are complex and have very different expectations about marital life and their own needs. They also come from very different backgrounds. Jude Law is exceptional as a man who is desperate to succeed (there are hints as to why he is so driven) and, when he begins to fail, cannot accept that he is unable to live up to his own expectations, which makes his character even more menacing. And yet, he somehow contrives to make Rory sympathetic, too. Carrie Coon excels, delivering a sterling performance as a woman who finds herself initially supporting her husband but becoming increasingly concerned as the scales fall from her eyes and she begins to understand that he is not all he makes himself out to be. Her motto seems to be, ‘when in doubt, light a cigarette’; this is the Eighties, after all! The sombre lighting and claustrophobic visuals of Hungarian DoP Mátyás Erdély (who shot the extraordinary Son Of Saul) add to the film’s unsettling atmosphere.
The Nest is an intelligent, thought-provoking film, a portrait of a disintegrating marriage that will stay with you after you leave the cinema. The ending may be too inconclusive for some but Rory and Allison’s predicament will get under your skin.