The Nest

It was raining so I decided to take a chance on this film. I shouldn't have bothered about it. It was slow and boring. The disintegration of a yuppie marriage. That was it,nothing more and a total bore.

How can any one make his or her family move locations 4 times within a 10- year timeframe? Let alone move overseas with a horse? That poor horse portrayed the stress and trauma of the downfall of the parents. Moving requires the kids to be uprooted, costly, change of schools, making new friends, etc. As the mom, she could have said to her husband, "go to London and figure out your plan." But we wouldn't have this movie then. The mom never seemed to be at home with kids nor had her own career; yet she hid her own money for her own emergencies knowing that her husband is an over spender and superficial hedonistic possibly narcissistic delusional person pretending to be rich while drowning in debt:. I think, his wife, Allison is equally at fault for agreeing to move the 4th time while pretending her husband, Rory doesn't have a problem. Hello, did she not live with this guy for the past 15 years (having a teenage daughter and 10 year old). I know some jobs like the military and many other job require household moves but that would all be expected already and paid for by those organizations.

It's the 80's. Ambitious commodities trader Rory O'Hara (Jude Law) returns to London taking his wife Allison (Carrie Coon) and their two kids. He is pushing for a big deal with a big payout. He is spending beyond his means and moves the family again to a country mansion. It causes friction with his wife and exacerbating their money trouble.

I like the idea of this family descending into dysfunction. I find a lot of it very compelling. Law and Coon are delivering intriguing performances. Filmmaker Sean Durkin, who made Martha Marcy May Marlene, is trying to give this film a quiet, naturalistic feel. It does need to be a bit clearer with the beginning. It's just too slow until the money troubles begin. That really raises the intensity and the movie picks up steam. Quite frankly, the start bored me to the point of passing out and I had to start over again. The passive filmmaking style is not conducive to paying attention.

"The Nest" was totally preaching to this choir.

The older we get, the more my wife and I find ourselves drifting into the life philosophy of minimalism. Our focus is on cutting all the junk out of our lives, not just material junk, but psychological and emotional junk as well. This means deciding where are priorities are, what's important to us, and eliminating things and people that interfere with that.

The patriarch in "The Nest," played by Jude Law, is pretty much the exact opposite of that. Never content with what he has (which is a lot when the movie starts, and more than most people on the planet will ever have) he insists on moving his family into a giant and decaying mansion in England in order to take a job that he knows will give him his big break. But it doesn't, and the effect his greedy lust for more, more, more has on his family comprises the plot of this movie. Law is very good, but Carrie Coon, as his wife, steals the show. Her character arc is the film's most fascinating element, a woman who's allowed herself to become subservient to her husband but for whom subservience doesn't come naturally. A couple of scenes, both set at dinner tables as it happens, where she asserts her dominance over her husband, are the film's most uncomfortable and memorable.

Some symbolism involving a pet horse is broadcast with all of the subtlety of a tornado siren, and the sheer unpleasantness of being around these miserable people may turn some viewers off, but I mostly found myself engaged with this one.

Grade: A-

Nicely played and it does have some interesting themes but it never makes the most of them, feeling dramatically inert for long periods. All of the tense scenes are in the trailer, the rest is a rather humdrum, if never quite boring, collection of family scenes. Saved from being a 5 by the final few reels.