Mare’s Nest review – a burnished gem from a British master

Although their budgets and cinematic ethos are markedly different, there really aren’t that many degrees of separation between British experimental filmmaker Ben Rivers and Hollywood titan Christopher Nolan. They both relish the tactile textures of celluloid. They are both masters in the art of fusing images and sound, particularly music. They are both avowedly modern directors who tangle with the possibilities of time and structure, but both keep their work rooted in an old-school classicism. Perhaps the key difference is that Rivers doesn’t go to such contrived lengths to explain or justify his wistful chronicles of lost civilisations. His gorgeous new film, Mare’s Nest, captures the meandering journey of blank-faced teen Moon (Moon Guo Barker) as she explores the reality of a post-apocalyptic world populated entirely by quasi-feral children.

The film’s bifurcated timeline sees Moon pass through a series of strange situations, some of which obliquely hint at the provenance of this primitive social order, while others show the expressive reality being played out via silent performance. Rivers has long been interested in depicting worlds that are divested of obvious context, instead demanding the participation of the viewer to not just fill in the blanks, but to enjoy the freedom of imagining anything that might help the images to make sense. However, this film contains one of his more overt guiding hands in the form of a quixotic centrepiece rendition of American author Don DeLillo’s lesser-known work, the one-act play ​‘The Word for Snow’. In this sequence, Rivers’ camera patiently cuts between three children (including Moon) as they intone the dialogue, their cold delivery subtly emphasising the tragedy of DeLillo’s reflective story, which deals with an oncoming climate catastrophe.

Later, there are references to Greek mythology with the appearance of a stone maze and a minotaur, while in its closing reels, the film showcases the musical talents of a kid who comes across as a pint-sized Daniel Johnston, singing in cracked, naïve strains while backing himself on what can only be described as an improvised rag-and-bone harmonium. Each segment comes with its own intertitle scrawled on a chalkboard, and the visuals switch between raw, hand-processed 16mm in both colour and black and white to more crisply rendered images of Moon on her voyage of discovery. It’s best not to exert too much energy attempting to divulge a simple meaning to this story, as all of Rivers’ best work – including this – asks that we alter our analytical priorities and take pleasure in the simple, rough-hewn beauty of the images and ideas that he gifts us.