The experimental director and visual artist Ben Rivers is a respected name in the film festival circuit. The director debuts his works in principal events, such as the Locarno Film Festival, where he premiered his 2024 film Bogancloch and his new work, Mare’s Nest, both in the Concorso Internazionale. In his latest effort, the British director adapts a one-act play by the legendary American author, Don DeLillo. The Word for Snow by DeLillo narrates a reality throughout the global climate change, where an individual searches for a professor who has become silent. The play by the New Yorker writer is only one of the segments of Rivers‘ new film, which features Moon (Moon Guo Barker) as its lead character, in a dystopian world where the adults have vanished, and children are the ones populating Earth. In Mare’s Nest, we follow Moon and the multiple events she faces alongside the other children she encounters on her journey.
In the first seconds, Moon writes the title on a school blackboard, stating that she is the one telling her own story. Her story is divided into chapters, narrating her adventures, and the encounter with other children who are alone in this immense world. In this sense, The Stone Age recounts her meeting with three sisters after she crashes the car she is driving into a tree, and finds a little turtle in the ground. The director establishes a fantastical world where the most consequential power is the children’s freedom. They are unrestricted in exploring the world, driving cars without a license, and interacting freely with the animals they discover in their daily walks. Moon is a central representation of infant curiosity. It is a wild desire to touch, understand, ask, and explore. Therefore, each of the segments presents her in the role of an explorer, diving into the current setting and discovering that specific dynamic.
The subsequent chapter follows the conversation between Moon and the scholar, adapted from DeLillo’s work. Defying the conventions of realism, children converse about dominating the fields of theology while questioning the real meaning of love. In a black and white approach, the three of them sit in a half-moon setting, where the light reminisces of the early age of cinema, particularly because of the Super 16mm film cinematography, shot by Rivers and Carmen Pellon. The scholar, the translator, and Moon state: “Love as in God of Love is Dead”, an indeed intellectual complex affirmation made by infants.
Yet, it is probably the most fascinating dialogue featured in the film. Particularly because the scene with the most prominent visual composition and narrative sequence is a reenactment of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, borrowing from the ancient Greek fable. The children become characters in the maze, amidst the sand on the beach, as they run around the maze path, and one of those children wears a bull head, referencing the Minotaur, the monster from Crete. Thus, it is similar to a scene from the mute cinema, where the images speak louder than lines of dialogue, and the cinematography provides a fascinating manipulation of the film and the director’s blocking, choosing the best angles to adapt a popular myth from the Greek mythology.
Unfortunately, the visual lushness does not translate to the other chapters as well as the two mentioned. The inventiveness of Moon’s adventure at the beach, alongside other children interpreting the Greek theater, and academic conversation sounds like peaks of creativity and visual composition by Rivers. The following stories and chapters are not as engaging and stimulating as the previous two. Moon becomes a subject to the actions instead of her figure as the explorer of each adventurer, imprinting the childhood energy in this adultless world. Hence, the upcoming stories are not as interesting to dive into because they repeat actions, and Moon is alone in different scenarios, places, and empty rooms. Besides the beautiful texture of the film’s cinematography, those images do not provide much context, meaning, or substance, preventing the film from becoming far more interesting.
Ultimately, despite the high remarks upon his work, Ben Rivers fails to deliver a meaningful work in Mare’s Nest. It has two fascinating chapters, where Moon Guo Barker steals the show as the pilgrim searching for meaning in the world without any adults. However, the British director falls into repetitiveness and a lack of engaging moments in completing his adaptation of Don DeLillo’s work. In the end, it seems like the director had the idea to adapt a thin source material, but did not get enough engaging ideas to complete his dystopian story.
Mare’s Nest recently premiered at the Locarno Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Locarno site for the title.
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