|
Take Shelter
| Released |
25 November 2011 |
| Director |
Jeff Nichols |
Starring
|
Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Kathy Baker |
| Writer(s) |
Jeff Nichols |
| Producer(s) |
Tyler Davidson, Sophia Lin |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
120 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Rating |
TBC |
|
|
Society of fear.
Reprising the winning combination of 2007's Shotgun Stories, Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon come together again for Take Shelter.
A portrait of working class life in the American heartland of Ohio, Shannon plays construction worker Curtis. “You've a good life”, his workmate Shea exclaims and indeed Curtis does. His partner Samantha (gently played by Jessica Chastain) is a delicately tentative and caring wife and homemaker who sells craftwork locally, while their young daughter Hannah (played by Tova Stewart) cements the American family ideal. But Hannah is deaf, in need of a cochlear implant to deal with her impairment and despite Curtis's appointment to a better paid supervisory role in the construction company they still struggle to make ends meet.
Not unalike Shakespearian pathetic fallacy (where the weather mirrors character interiority) the story sets off into a slow burn of torment as Curtis paranoiacally becomes convinced of an oncoming storm. Beset by both visions and dreams where broad forces persecute the security of his family, he grows obsessively concerned with building a storm shelter outside his house (an expense which ironically threatens his family's survival far more than any of his perceived dangers).
Here, like in Exorcist director William Friedkin's 2006 film Bug, (which Shannon also starred in) this paranoia mirrors something more significant about the character's situation or indeed figuratively explains a pervasive societal anxiety about everything from the environment to the economy to more practical dangers like physical violence or animal attack. Oil rains from the sky, swarms of insects descend, the sky darkens, thunder claps and people turn on one another unexpectedly.
While terrifying these visions are sometimes apocalyptically captivating on screen and director Jeff Nichols adeptly asks the audience to dance a double edged sword of sympathy and fear as Curtis who, as evidenced by his mother's (Kathy Bates) paranoid schizophrenia, may be descending further and further into delusion. With an ambiguous ending and an intelligent pace, Take Shelter is artistically on point and magnificently acted. An Oscar nomination for Shannon is most likely on the cards.
- Cormac O’Brien |
