It wasn’t until about halfway through The Nest that I started to question what the latest film from Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) was really about. Best described as an uncomfortable familial drama, Durkin’s feature is set in the high-stakes world of status chasing. Perched in the periphery of a patriarch’s quest for large sums of money from his Trans-Contential business dealings, The Nest’s emotional center is a family suffering the ambitions of a father and his vacuous pursuit of wealth and status.
Jude Law stars as Rory O’Hara, a vain entrepreneur with a vague job description. Having graduated from the world of commodities trading, Rory brokers deals in the quest for big cash outs that can support his extravagant lifestyle. From mink coats to untenably large country manors and white picket fences that house expensive horses, Rory values the appearance of success. Potentially above all else. And this is beginning to drive his headstrong wife Allison (Carrie Coon) to a breaking point. 
As the 1980s businessman, Law gives one of his best performances of his career playing a man broken by his self-mythologizing and reckless aggrandizing. He brags to his peers about his “penthouse in New York” or “summering in Portugal” (because the Riviera is so overplayed nowadays), elevating his station in life through little fictions and embellishments. Far beyond his nagging humble beginnings. Set in a time period wherein the father was responsible for “providing” and little more, The Nest begs questions surrounding the hardships and sacrifices that the entire family endures for that “providing” to occur.
No one is more directly effected than Allison, who really just wants to tend to her kids and her horse. After four big moves in the last decade, Allison is done trotting between the US and London, moving as the wind blows for Rory to capitalize best. Coon imbues Allison with hard-nosed grit and she remains stubbornly true to herself. A scene where she demandingly orders an extravagant dinner at an upscale restaurant is amongst the finest moments of the film. Her blunt honesty is the Kryptonite to Rory’s grandiose self-mythologizing and this bubbles to the surface at inopportune times, oftentimes spoiling his illusion of wealth, status and stature that the mannered elite Rory rubs elbows with so effortlessly maintain.
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Durkin’s film unspools at a measured pace, leisurely revealing the inner turmoil of its characters and their failed attempts to perform social status and happiness. Some viewers may find the experience unfolding too slowly or too cooly for their liking or struggle to find meaning behind the nuances of Durkin’s picture, but I found myself reflecting on how entire generations of men too suffered their own ambitions and dragged their family to hell and back in order to hold up this idealized, outdated and largely not-functional idea of the nuclear family and how it ought to function.
As Rory and Allison’s life and relationship crumble, the manor they occupy reveals itself to be more dated and drab than at first glance as well. Entire rooms go unfurnished, boarded up empty and cold. Rory promises to build a horse stable but that too encounters difficulty. There is death and emptiness everywhere. The roomy but almost-zombified nature of the space becomes an imposing prison of sorts. A sense of abandon defines the production design from James Price, which itself is the perfect overlay to a persistently unnerving score, and helps create an environment reminiscent of a horror film, though devoid of any actual horror elements.
Durkin’s script is sharp and to the point, luxuriating in the disquiet of the O’Hara family’s fundamental brokenness. It’s silently crushing but not without a glimmer of forgiveness and recompense, offering up hope in the notion of a family unit being a renewable resource. The idea that something broken can be fixed if given the air and light to breathe and heal gives Durkin’s feature a breathe of hopefulness that transcends even Rory’s inevitable pull towards vanity.
CONCLUSION: This well-acted follow-up feature from Sean Durkin is a ruminant deconstruction of ambition at the cost of a family’s emotional well-being. ‘The Nest’s measured pace and subtle themes may leave some viewers wondering at its meaning but those willing to emotionally engage with Durkin’s work may find themselves helplessly dwelling on exactly that.
B
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By: Matt Oakes
Started blogging about film in college when the university paper wouldn’t have him. Dislikes your consensus film Twitter favorites. Devotee of horror movies that make him die a little inside. Catches films at festivals when he can. Proud SFCS and OFCS member and Tomatometer-approved critic. Editor-in-chief of Silver Screen Riot.
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