A Moon, a Minotaur and Don DeLillo walk into a bar. Hilarity ensues! No, not really. Ben Rivers’ latest feature film, “Mare’s Nest,” is an experimental blunderbuss for the arthouse circuit. Expect dreamy meditations on language, history and the Anthropocene, couched in oblique dialogue and blocking performed by a cast of unkempt children. Popcorn need not apply.
Based on DeLillo’s one-act play “The Word For Snow,” “Mare’s Nest” primarily follows the perambulations of Moon, played by Moon Guo Barker, as she wanders through landscapes of smoke, fire and stone, hurling monolith-sized monologues directly through the fourth wall and into the audience’s lap.
The first 30 minutes or so of the film is dedicated to the premise that there is something inherently profound in putting speeches into the mouths of children that are full of words and concepts that they visibly do not understand. If you can suffer through this protracted introduction, the feature finds better footing as a dialogue-free (or at least -reduced) filmic poem of sight and sound.
Rivers has a keen sense for unearthing the human primitive that lies beneath our cultural affectations. At their best, his child actors communicate a kind of wild freedom and spontaneity that their domesticated adult counterparts can’t. Think of Harmony Korine’s “Gummo” and Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct.”
Sometimes this freedom simply amounts to a group of children chasing after another child disguised in a bull’s mask, which is the plot of the short movie buried inside “Mare’s Nest,” retelling the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth à la “Lord of the Flies.” Dressed up with Rivers cinematography, dramatic setting and retro color grading reminiscent of Pasolini’s Greek tragedies (and certain Instagram filters), this chapter is a sumptuous stretch of filmmaking that elevates the whole.
However elevated the whole might be, it doesn’t quite hang together as a unity. You will walk out of the theater feeling like you’ve seen an assemblage of short films instead of a single feature. There’s nothing wrong with that. Rivers has been wowing the art crowd for years with visionary shorts. If you’ve waiting for him to deliver his Grand Unifying Feature, keep waiting.
“Mare’s Nest” at 5 p.m. on July 1-2 at The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Square, Cambridge.
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