{"id":75279,"date":"2020-09-25T19:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/sean-durkin-on-his-new-film-film\/"},"modified":"2020-09-25T19:00:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:00:56","slug":"sean-durkin-on-his-new-film-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/sean-durkin-on-his-new-film-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Sean Durkin on His New Film \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Sean Durkin on His New Film \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n

Writer\/director\/producer Sean Durkin<\/strong> is unafraid to take us to some dark places, providing a unique and compelling vision along the way. The winner of the Sundance directing award for <\/span>Martha Marcy May Marlene<\/span><\/i>, he returned to that festival with <\/span>The Nest<\/i><\/strong>, a creepy, harrowing character piece about a family\u2019s struggles with their own dreams and expectations. It\u2019s a film that takes genre elements and gives them a welcome twist, belying expectations at every move, resulting in a deep character piece that\u2019s moving and effective.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his original review, \/Film writer Ben Pearson <\/span>called the film<\/span> a \u201csearing, smoldering exploration of ambition\u201d, and I also alliteratively <\/span>described it<\/span><\/a> as a \u201cbrittle, bleak take of a family fueled by hubris and ambition.\u201d With an exceptional core cast of Carrie Coon, Jude Law, Charlie Shotwell and Oona Roch, there\u2019s much to dig into this rich story.<\/span><\/p>\n

\/Film spoke to Sean by phone prior to the film\u2019s theatrical relase.<\/span>
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\nThe following has been edited for clarity and concision<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Your film is a Canadian-UK co-production about a transatlantic crossing. Do you yourself feel like a Canadian-UK co-production, and did that come to mind when you were crafting the film?<\/b><\/p>\n

[Laughs] Yeah! I was born in Canada, and I lived in England as a kid, though I\u2019ve spent most of my life in America. So it\u2019s funny the makeup of the film is very much all three countries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How did that inform this thriller that you wrote how these cultures collide?<\/b>
\nIt always just starts from a character place. When I was a kid I moved to London from New York, and there was this huge difference, much different than it is now. I thought that would be good for this stark change as well as beyond that, when it becomes about family and marriage and getting into the detail of that and those things. I always start on my personal level. Over time I make decisions to shape it, such as about what year did I set it in. I chose 1986 because I wanted it to be centered on the eve of the financial Big Bang. Many companies in London being sold off at the time, and it seemed a chance to make a lot of money. Obviously no one knew that the financial markets would crumble a year later. I did want those values of that time to be at the core of what was going wrong in the family, with this idea of this guy who who\u2019s been sold this idea of success and thinking he\u2019s doing the right thing for his family, not thinking about the details and what it means emotionally. So it always comes for me out of the character first, and their decisions and the bigger scenes come later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Success in America is rated one way, but there still is the massive baggage of class in Britain, where no matter what you earn you often can\u2019t buy your way to prestige.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

That was a big part of Rory. I really felt strongly about showing where he came from, even if it\u2019s just a few minutes. To learn that Rory grew up on this estate [ie., lower income housing], it shows that he has broken out of that class system. That\u2019s something major that drives his character. That leads him to be quite confused about who he is because he\u2019s so worried about what he\u2019s not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I really loved the whole central metaphor of the title of the film. It\u2019s all about where we come from and our origins \u2013 we can\u2019t choose our nest, but we choose what happ<\/a>ens after. Then there are things like cuckoo birds that take over other birds\u2019 nests and make it their own, but that\u2019s an even darker drive.<\/b><\/p>\n

Exactly. It\u2019s about where we choose to build a home.<\/span>
\nCan you talk about bringing that family together?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Each person took a different path. I\u2019d spent some time with Carrie through friends the year before and got to know her a bit. For some reason at first I wasn\u2019t even thinking about her, and then my casting director said her name and it was like a light opened up! I needed someone who could capture a duality. I think we\u2019re not used to seeing characters that are more than one thing \u2013 You have this person who is hard-working, engaged in physical labour, mucking out stalls, and a real horse person, but also a woman who loves to get dressed up and go out. That\u2019s just a surface description of it, but to capture those things in tandem believably is quite tricky, and Carrie just has that in her. With Jude, I asked him to read it and he met me in L.A. From the very first conversation we just wanted the same things from the project, which was to find that nuance and heart and love that\u2019s underneath everything Rory does, even if it doesn\u2019t seem like it at times. Jude just has massive heart and warmth and so I just knew that he would capture that and give it that real internal life. For casting the kids, we did a pretty wide search in New York. This is Oona\u2019s first role, she had self-taped audition and I knew immedia<\/a>tely she\u2019s it. Her character had to have a toughness and adry humor under everything, and Oona just had that in her first audition. Charlie\u2019s done so much work, he\u2019s so experienced, so reliable, he\u2019s such a great kid. I\u2019d seen a bunch of people, and come across his tape and we met in person and it was, like, how old are you?! It\u2019s quite a quiet role and he\u2019s not that, and so it was great for him to have the wise eyes underneath this character.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This felt a little bit, in a good way, like a Cronenberg film, maybe because of Jude\u2019s involvment. Are there specific filmmakers, specific tones that you looked at while crafting the script of getting that sense of unease that is baked through it?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The movie that really opened my eyes to what a family drama could be was <\/span>Shoot the Moon<\/span><\/i>, the Alan Parker film from the early 80s, which I had never even heard of. That\u2019s just the best family drama I\u2019ve ever seen, hands down. The writing\u2019s incredible, the acting\u2019s incredible, the direction\u2019s incredible, it has a naturalism, but an atmosphere in really subtle ways, in the setting, in the changing seasons, in these parents splitting up and they\u2019re in two different houses. That became a guide for me when writing it. In addition to that I drew upon the films of Alan Clarke, since I\u2019m making something set in England of the 80s. Clarke explored very different worlds than this, but he had an ability over and over again to capture some absolute truth of British life. Then, films like <\/span>The Shining<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/span><\/i> are my bedrock.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess that\u2019s what I\u2019m reaching for. There\u2019s a thriller element here, and if you look at <\/b>Eastern Promises<\/i><\/b> or <\/b>History of Violence<\/i><\/b>, there\u2019s this dance between genres, that you have what\u2019s essentially a family drama wrapped in this other sort of hard intensity. Kubrick makes sense, and even Bergman \u2013 You\u2019ve mentioned previously you\u2019re a big fan of <\/b>Persona<\/i><\/b>.<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah. I wanted the genre elements without fully going there, without making it a horror film, obviously. I wanted to use the elements to represent the emotional experience of what was going on with characters. I was creating these bones of the haunted house, without being haunted. Yet the people in it <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> haunted.\u00a0<\/span>
\nDo you consider yourself part of the American Indie community?<\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think about those things. I\u2019m just interested in the work. I have a wide variety of interests that I haven\u2019t got to explore yet, so I just do the work that I\u2019m drawn. Whatever the labels are around that, I\u2019m not sure about. I would just say I\u2019ve done a small part of what I can and want to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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