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(The Nest, 2021 | 1h 47m | London, Fulham Road Picturehouse, 142 Fulham Road, Sun 22nd Aug @ 14:00)
https://we-love-cinema.com/movies/49401-the-nest/
"The Nest"
Rory (Jude Law), an charismatic ambitious entrepreneur and former commodities broker, persuades his American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), and their children Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell) and Samantha (Dona Roche) to leave the comforts of suburban America and return to his native England. He relocates his family to England with dreams of profiting from booming 1980’s London. Sensing opportunity, Rory rejoins his former firm and leases a centuries-old country manor, with grounds for Allison’s horses and plans to build a stable. But as his wife, Allison, struggles to adapt, and soon the promise of a lucrative new beginning starts to unravel, the couple have to face the unwelcome truths lying beneath the surface of their marriage. The family buckles beneath an unaffordable lifestyle and increasing isolation as they head toward a seemingly inevitable breakdown.
"The Nest" is set in 1986 to explore the link between America and 'The UK'. Pre-financial crash, the emerging global market, and London at the height of deregulation. The film wants to intrinsically link the celebrated values of the time, such as risk and ambition, to the issues at the core of the family’s conflict. It's an era of capitalist opportunism that promised plenty, and Rory sees it as a way to have the life they always dreamed of. But the move to England quickly erodes the equality that Rory and Allison have in America, and Allison’s identity is subsumed by being his wife. They slip into traditional gender roles, propping each other up in co-dependency. As he tries to face his past she becomes the silent enabler, succumbing to his mythomania, all at the cost of her family’s wellbeing. Within this setting the film reflects on personal experience to create an unsettling, naturalistic family drama that explores how a move across 'The Atlantic' uproots the dormant truths that lie beneath this family’s dynamic. Within the family, the priority is to explore a marriage in a truthful way. Rory and Allison are a complex couple, deeply in love and attracted to each other, they've a seemingly equal partnership that is slowly unmasked as a co-created myth. Their individual dualities make them both perfect partners and polar opposites. They're respectively plagued by aspirational values of the society around them, and the duty handed down to them by previous generations. The film contemplates the corrosive value system of the 1980s and it's human toll, as it spreads like a sickness nobody realized is there. Rory is it's embodiment; the unrepentant capitalist for whom wealth and status become the measure of self-worth. This moral poison enters his home, sending everyone down their own self-destructive paths.
Growing up between America and England in the 80’s and 90’s, you experienced a stark difference in atmosphere between the two places that has long stayed with us. We always feel the contrast provides a haunting tonal shift in a film and this backdrop sparked the conception of "The Nest". Blurring social critique and character drama, "The Nest" reflects on the moral and spiritual emptiness of an unselfconsciously aspirational society, one in which we forsake everything to get what we want, even when we no longer know why we want it. "The Nest" explores themes of masculinity, gender roles, family structure, and 'The American Dream' by examining a family at a very specific time and place that's both a unique moment in history and one that reflects today.
