TIFF 2025: ‘Mare’s Nest’ Review
Audiences may enter into the post-apocalyptic world of Mare’s Nest much in the same way that its lead character, Moon (played by Moon Guo-Barker), is introduced: through a car crash. Those unfamiliar with Ben Rivers’ prior works will likely find themselves at odds with his latest experimental project—an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s one-act play, The Word for Snow. Revolving around a future in which climate change has destroyed society as we know it, Mare’s Nest further explores this by taking Moon on a journey through an adultless world where the past is unknowable and the future uncertain. Broken up into a series of vignettes that are both informative and confusing in equal measure, Rivers’ latest film is an elegant examination of language, history, and the natural world that quickly exchanges a straightforward curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge for something far more opaque and muddied in its execution.
My familiarity with Rivers came through the lyrical triptych A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, co-directed by Ben Russell, in which experimental musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe traversed Scandinavia via a commune in Estonia, the wilderness of Finland, and a black metal concert in Norway. While that film had a clear structure and its disparate segments built off one another, it also came together as a cohesive whole. It felt emblematic of a subgenre of music that continues to resonate with me to this day. It was also completely attuned to the natural world. Similarly, Mare’s Nest is consumed by mankind’s relationship with nature. From its opening crash and an extended sequence in which Moon delivers a monologue about the origin of life to a turtle found in the middle of the road, Rivers wastes little time establishing that things are bleak for society and questions why things have deteriorated to this point, pointing to a variety of reasons—most notably, climate change.
Birds chirping in the background are drowned out by the constant drone of the score, evoking a sense of something industrial and unnatural. Moon walks through concrete buildings where some take refuge, but even those ruins are slowly overgrown with grass, trees, and roots. Wildlife is clearly still alive, but being pushed into whatever space is available. Rivers and Carmen Pellon share cinematography duties and emphasize the beauty of Moon’s environment as she wanders through wooded landscapes and fog-covered mountains. It’s a gorgeous-looking movie that utilizes Super 16mm film to provide a tactile quality, and every frame of nature is mesmerizing.
Mare’s Nest is littered with beautiful imagery, but its main allure is undoubtedly the conversations that its worldbuilding instigates. The centrepiece of the movie occurs early on and sets the tone for how the film is viewed from that point forward. A conversation between Moon, a sage, and a translator cuts directly to the core of the world left behind by past generations. The play’s title, “The Word for Snow,” is explained here in great detail through a series of recursive remarks and pointed observations, with an emphasis on how language is distorted and images become lost. The fact that all these conversations occur between children with no adults in sight attributes a blame that looms over every frame. More pointed commentary comes later in the film, but the way the movie begins to engage with the audience is far more immersive as a tool of explanation.
The struggle with Mare’s Nest is particularly evident in its latter half, where the film’s pace slows considerably and Rivers becomes increasingly infatuated with rituals and tribal imagery. It’s where the film arguably looks the most impressive and captures the majestic qualities of the caves and forests the characters inhabit. What you have taken away from the movie at that point will dictate what you get out of it once it becomes largely wordless and Moon’s journey feels less purposeful and more of an experiential learning process. By then, the film has transformed into something more akin to walking through a museum. It becomes a far more tedious experience.
There’s nothing quite like engrossing oneself in nature, and Ben Rivers has proven time and again that he is well aware of what is so alluring about it. The decision to shoot on Super 16mm imbues the film with a relic quality—these are images that have travelled both space and time. Mare’s Nest suggests that our society will lose more than land as it continues on its current trajectory; however, through its images, there’s a haunting notion that maybe these elements are already being lost. As with any experimental film, your mileage may vary. While the film wisely invites conversation about its world early on, all that philosophizing seems to be pushed too far into the background in exchange for opaque and enigmatic vignettes as it progresses. The vignettes themselves offer interesting snapshots of a society trying to piece itself together, but strung together, they never quite feel like a cohesive whole. It’s an absorbing text that stretches itself thin thematically in an effort to provide further enrichment. The result is something that leaves a strong first impression, which then lingers until it fades before the credits even roll.
The 50th Toronto International Film Festival takes place between September 4th and 14th. Mare’s Nest celebrates its North American premiere on September 4th, as part of TIFF’s Wavelengths program. The full list of films selected for the festival can be found here.
