Sean Durkin

The Iron Claw

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Kevin flies through the air towards an opponent in the ring

The family is a cult and the cult a family in the films of Sean Durkin. After Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest, The Iron Claw continues Durkin’s excavations with a biopic of the Von Erichs, a famous wrestling clan whittled away by a tragic curse. After a quick black-and-white preamble sketching paterfamilias Fritz’s own career as a fighter who failed to win the big prizes, Durkin goes curtain-up on the era of the retired fighter’s sons, the sun-kissed 1970s and beyond. Fritz, now a ballsy uncompromising martinet of the old school, is in charge of training his boys and of the wrestling franchise they fight in. By this point the family … Read more

The Nest

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Allison and Rory in the Elizabethan manor

Suddenly Ingmar Bergman seems to be fashionable again. Just last week I watched Black Bear, a film with a hint of Bergman’s Persona. Now, in The Nest, there’s touches of Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. Which means that if you’re looking for fireworks, you’ve come to the wrong film. The Nest is a journey into dark psychological territory so muted that it would be easy to miss what’s going on. On the surface things look pretty peachy – Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is a successful trader who’s moved his family from New York back to the UK, where Rory has used his huge Wall Street bonanza to rent a massive Elizabethan mansion – … Read more