Movie Review: The Nest Shows Marriages Can Be Horrifying
In the 80s, a little thing called Reaganomics or the “Trickle Down” economy began. In that same era, “Greed Is Good” was a primary slogan. Wealth and the wolves of Wall Street, like Donald Trump, were admired for their revelry, decadence, and freedom from the tether of “moral guilt.” I mention this because Sean Durkin’s The Nest is about that mentality and how it completely and eerily cracked open a marriage, a family, and a woman to her own power.
Written and directed by Durkin, from the beginning, you can see the emotional boulder slowly rolling towards Jude Law’s Rory and Carrie Coon’s Allison. She is a humble woman, and the film portrays her as so down to earth she, literally, takes cares of horses. She gets into the soil and roots of her family’s dynamics in ways that Law’s Rory cannot because to be of “status” means you never touch emotional grime. Thus, as Rory takes a “fake it till you make it” mentality to climb London’s upper echelons, and prove America has turned him into a “Wall Street Wolf,” Allison and his children are left to get lost in their new estate, which is far from a home.
THE NEST Official Trailer (2020) Jude Law
The cast is exceptional as a family unit growing blind to each of its members. Coon makes Allison smart, strong, and fragile, all once. Her performance is bulletproof glass, of which Law’s Rory is trying to find an alternative way to break her: whether he sees it or not. Law is the TITULAR jerk, but gives nuance and vulnerability to being materialistic. For him, poverty and any semblance of it is something that makes him seethe, of which, again, fractured relationships feels like something for the poor. In essence, he completely captures how disgusted “wealthy” people are with poverty and how, in turn, that idolization of money cuts their emotional growth. Yet, Allison is sprouting when it comes to feelings and, as Rory goes downhill, she rises.
Durkin makes the film about the disintegration of a marriage, and thus a family, look like a horror film. I kept on waiting for a “Here’s Johnny” moment, where Rory went full on The Shining while looking for gold cufflinks. Yet, that is Durkin’s intention, which makes the film look stunning and feel poignant. When a couple is no longer seeing eye to eye on what defines a good life, their very marriage can become haunting to them. As the film progresses, aesthetically, the house halls look longer, the walls drearier, and even the very entry way sickly, but it makes sense. When you home is the last place you want to be, it takes everything not to want to flee “The Nest.” The Nest Comes Out In Theaters on September 18.
