The Spool / Movies
Sean Durkin and Richard Reed Parry on scoring “The Nest”
The director and composer of the Jude Law-Carrie Coon drama The Nest sit down to talk about their collaboration.
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Welcome back to the Spool’s weekly interview podcast, More of a Comment, Really…, where editor-in-chief Clint Worthington talks to actors, filmmakers, composers and other figures from the realm of film and television.

The Nest, which marks filmmaker Sean Durkin‘s second feature film, his first since 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, sees him operating in the same sophisticated, glitteringly fragile mode as his debut. Charting the deterioration of a family in the 1980s after their fast-talking patriarch (a rivetingly brittle Jude Law) moves them to London to chase opportunity, The Nest soaks its characters — particularly Carrie Coon as Law’s anxious, suffocated wife — in the ominous atmosphere of the cavernous Surrey estate Law buys for them to live in. It’s far too big for the family of four, and its looming spaces threaten to swallow them whole.

For Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, it’s his first feature film score to date. But he and Durkin collaborate on an airy, lounge-y sound that fills the corners of that huge, empty house and the status-saving parties our characters soak themselves in. Double bass collides with dissonant strings, crashing piano chords, and cymbals to create a sound that’s not unlike the feeling of losing yourself in a fancy party you realize far too late you weren’t invited to.

It’s a smooth, intuitive score made all the more intriguing by the glimmers of darkness — those scratchy, scratchy strings — laid throughout Parry’s rumbling lounge work.

NOW STREAMING:

For the podcast, The Spool sits down with both Durkin and Parry to chronicle the beginning of their collaboration, finding the scratchy little nooks and crannies of The Nest‘s world, and trying to encapsulate the anxieties of its central characters through music. (Plus, you’ll hear a snippet from the film’s score.)

You can also listen to the film’s score on Spotify below. The Nest is currently available on VOD.