For most people, there is an importance in how we treat our family. While the world around us may change, those in our direct circles will be around for hopefully decades, guiding us to be our best selves. They’re the ones that mentor us, trying to find our best selves as we try to go further. But, as cinema will be quick to point out, there’s something more interesting about exploring what happens when everything goes wrong, with that substantial support group disappears and everyone is out there fending for themselves. What is a family if one doesn’t have someone to back them up? There’s a good chance that it looks a bit like The Nest (2020).
The latest drama from director Sean Durkin is one whose horror lies in how slight the whole experience is. It follows a young couple, played by Jude Law and Carrie Coon, as they move into a new home and attempt to start a new life. Law is a go-getter, eager to please at work with draining commutes and long hours that reveal how unrewarding this approach to work actually is. While it’s not an American story, it manages to feel as timeless as “The Great Gatsby” in how it depicts success as a poor substitute for love. At the end of the film, Law is not the phenomenon that he sets out to be and, in some ways, ends up with much less than he started with.
That isn’t to say that he gets divorced or loses a home. All of the symbols of wealth are still there. However, the idea of a perfect life has faded. Everyone ends us frayed, torn apart by one man’s quest to be much more than he can be. What makes it exceptional is how Durkin uses symbolism to convey these struggles slowly collapsing even within a mild state. It isn’t just endless hours of Law toiling away at work, being overbearing on the one dinner date he has with Coon. He’s committed to the vision of success and it makes him insincere, a tad obnoxious. He doesn’t know what anyone’s problems are like because he’s overwhelmed by his own. He is desperate to make the money to uphold the lifestyle.
Which makes it interesting to note what the home life is like. The most noteworthy is the titular nest: a cavernous mansion. Everyone practically has their own corner to toil away, feeling lonely as they count down the hours. For Coon, she passes the afternoons by roaming the property, admiring the vast amount of space that overlooks nothing in particular. She even has a horse that she rides around until one day it breaks its leg and dies.
To prove how insecure Law is, he overreacts to the horse’s death. He believes that he wasted money on a sick horse, desiring to sue the person he bought it from. This tension informs how scrutinous he’s become. Everything is supposed to flourish, and instead, it’s like his marriage. She is there observing his downfall, feeling hopeless as a result. She has few people to turn to, finding her insular struggles starting to boil to the surface. She can’t take it out on her children, and it causes toxic emotions deep inside.
Even with all of this death and misery in the subtext, this isn’t a very active movie. It’s a quiet, strategic story that comes through in the various stares that Coon gives Law, where the awkward networking dinners have this hint of desperation. Coon has no choice but to watch, and it’s painful. You’re just waiting for her to scream, and her refined nature only makes it more powerful when she does snap. As she reprimands her children from across the mansion, there’s an awareness of how big of a void there is in the family. All it takes is someone speaking from atop a flight of stairs to reveal how no two people are on the same level.
While there’s plenty to love in the Coon and Law dynamic, it’s important to remember the children in the scenario. Together, they form the forgotten component of the family. While their parents are in a nonstop struggle to hear each other, they find themselves aimlessly wandering through life, doing a more toxic version of their parents’ behavior with isolation and socializing that introduces them to a host of problems. By the end, they’re caught up in parties where everyone is drunk and dancing pointlessly. The question becomes whether they feel validated by these experiences, becoming their own self-reliant parents as they make their own decisions. It’s tragic, but it shows how in a world of absence, everyone finds ways to move on alone.
Even if Phantom Thread (2017) may not be directly similar to The Nest, there are components that are similar. It is the story of a marriage that is maybe even more tumultuous for the simple fact that Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps have to work together. Whereas Law gets to escape via train to his work, every major development in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film happens at The House of Woodcock. When they wake up in the morning, they see each other’s faces, being transported to another room where they design dresses. The lack of space between them becomes insufferable, causing constant jabs at each other.
Admittedly, it’s a more comedic take with a dry sense of humor. However, it comes from a similar dominance play that Law and Coon. Day-Lewis is a perceived genius, capable of making fabrics flow with this vibrant life. He puts personalized notes inside of the dresses as a personal touch. He has a strict vision that he wants, and he’s not afraid to criticize whatever he dislikes. His anal retentiveness is so prominent that when he has breakfast, he gets picky about how Krieps butters her toast, itself sounding like an unpleasant scrape. Backing him up is his sister, played by Lesley Manville, who goes along with this behavior. Why? Because what he has done continues to work.
Some could argue that Day-Lewis is quietly evil in his strictness, refusing to let Krieps have any say in how things operate. She has to put up with constant comments of what’s wrong with her, finding him at his most vulnerable. While it may seem insufferable, at least it has more of a communication success than The Nest. There’s almost zero conversation towards the end that could mend their relationship. Everyone is broken and doesn’t take time to grapple with their issues. They spiral into their own world and the house ends up in tatters, Anti-Yuppy rhetoric being spraypainted on the walls.
The Nest reflects a failure of relationships while Phantom Thread shows something closer to healthy. Mind you, it’s not exactly the most upstanding example, especially with Manville’s third wheel only enabling bad behavior. However, the story of perceived dominance eventually becomes a ploy to understand how crucial both perspectives are to making a marriage work. When Day-Lewis’ behavior feels like it reaches a fever pitch, that he’s going to keep getting worse and worse, it’s when Krieps begins to shine through and deliver a rousing twist in the third act.
It becomes a revenge story where Krieps dismantles Day-Lewis’ ego by messing with his dinner. As the housewife archetype, she is responsible for all of these menial tasks. This serves as another thing for her to be criticized, and it comes down to the most novel thing imaginable. She poisons his dinner one night with mushrooms, sending him into a crippling sickness that requires him to be reliant on her. Suddenly the most self-sufficient man imaginable has no choice but to recognize the value that his wife gives him, even if it may secretly be leading to some form of petty revenge.
The Nest has no time for this formal of revenge. All that is done is an increasing absence, a divide between Coon and Law that includes ignoring their children. It’s only when major obstacles like dead horses or house parties stand in the way that anyone thinks to argue. Even then, the children observe the downfall of their parents, helpless. Coon escapes to night clubs and dances, drinking to her heart’s contempt. Nobody gets poisoned. They’re all sick by themselves and there’s no sense that any of them are likely to save the other in the case that this becomes real.
Phantom Thread is almost too claustrophobic by comparison, finding Anderson getting too involved with the ins and outs of marriage. Any silence is filled with this lingering sense of someone staring in judgment. They resent each other for taking their moment away from them. There is love there, but it comes with realizing where the boundaries are. You come away convinced that there’s something there. The beautiful score by Jonny Greenwood raises the overall elegance with melodramatic strings that mix in a macabre and sinister vibe that jangles like their nerves.
The Nest has a similar unnerving quality, but again it’s more about how sparse things become. By the end, the finale centers around how divided the many roads have gone. Coon is suffering a mental breakdown while her kids have all isolated themselves in various ways. Meanwhile, Law is returning home from work, yelling at a cab driver about how he’s a good father. When the cab driver suggests that he’s doing the bare minimum, it unleashes spiraling insecurity that causes him to reveal too much, including the potential fact that he’s dishonest and not going to pay for the cab fare. It leaves him having to walk home in the dark.
For The Nest, the ending is about as optimistic as things get. This deconstruction of the go-getter reveals how empty it actually is. Law doesn’t become a millionaire by the end, instead of having a home shattered and in need of repair. The same can be said for his family, now riddled with anxiety and guilt. It’s only when they observe the graffiti, the trash strewn across the floor, and the dead horse that they begin to see how far they’ve gone in the wrong direction. As the children prepare breakfast, replacing the adults as the parents, it becomes clear that if there’s any hope for the family, they need to realize what’s important and rebuild from the ground up.
Phantom Thread is a bit more romanticized, swelling with Greenwood’s score and this growing affection between each other. It’s true that they also suffer vindictive attacks, but the audience gets to see the repairs as they go about their lives, enjoying some form of peaceful reconstruction. They may be flawed, but they need each other to see the bigger picture, to make the world a better place. They will have bad days, but they can’t let that keep them from realizing the love they have for each other. At best, The Nest alludes to this though very little time is spent establishing it that the audience is forced to fill in the blanks.
The Nest is an impressive achievement that allows the viewer to revel in every detail, finding these archetypes turning from symbols into something more compelling. Coon gives a great leading performance that captures the minutiae of loneliness in its true form while Law’s struggle with power remains a sad center to its story. Together, their dysfunction is so convincing that it carries the movie. You understand every vindictive argument, and there’s horror in never getting it resolved when it was easier to handle. It’s the idea that hard work matters, that it will make the difference. Instead, unlike Phantom Thread, it tears people apart.
Family is a difficult thing to control and build in healthy ways. It is why drama is often built between the conflict of a couple, a father and son, or any other various combination that could do with basic understanding. These two films are exemplary examples of this trend, finding clever new ways to show why everyone needs to stop now and then to listen to each other. There is value in gradual repair instead of waiting until it’s too late. These are cautionary tales, all too reflective of life in ways that may not be all that fictive. Houses hold deeper meaning when they’re filled with people you love, so why not make sure it doesn’t fall apart?
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