Movie : Take Shelter
Release Date : September 30, 2011
Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
Director : Jeff Nichols
Screenwriter : Jeff Nichols
Starring : Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker
Genre : Drama, Thriller
Official Website : Not Available
With his sad-eyed intensity and a towering physicality almost like that of Frankenstein's monster, there's possibly no more mesmerizing American actor working in any medium today than Michael Shannon. His talents are put to exceptional use in writer-director Jeff Nichols' devastating Take Shelter.
Snapped up pre-Sundance by Sony Pictures Classics, this knockout prestige picture is a masterfully controlled piece of work on every level -- from its precise modulation of mood to its piercing emotional accuracy, its impeccable craftsmanship and breathtaking imagery. Rarely have electrical storms, cloud formations and glowering skies had such an unnerving impact or expressed such dark visual poetry.
While at times it conjures suggestions of vintage Polanski-style paranoia in rural America, this haunting psychological thriller is also a quasi-horror movie firmly rooted in slice-of-life reality. An allegory for the troubles of the world bearing down on ordinary people in an age of natural, industrial and economic cataclysms, it taps into pervasive anxiety more acutely than any film since Todd Haynes' Safe.
In his second collaboration with Shannon following Shotgun Stories, Nichols has written a role tailored to the actor's particular gifts in Curtis LaForche. From cinematographer Adam Stone's first arresting widescreen view of Curtis standing outside his small-town Ohio home, staring up at an ominous sky as clouds burst and oily rain falls, it's clear this man has disturbing thoughts on his mind.
He has a loving home life with wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and 6-year-old daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), who has lost her hearing but is scheduled for corrective surgery. He also has job security as crew manager for a drilling company, working alongside his buddy Dewart (Shea Whigham). Without belaboring the point, however, Nichols reminds us that stability these days hangs on a tenuous thread.
Dreams and hallucinations portending violence increasingly plague Curtis, some of them perhaps even real. From flocks of birds like moving ink stains overhead, to walls of thundering clouds closing in on him, to levitating furniture that comes crashing down, these frightening visions are executed with stunning effectiveness by an ace visual effects team led by Chris Wells.
Keeping his inner turmoil to himself but leaving his wife and colleague to interpret his increasingly irrational and obsessive behavior, Curtis tries sedatives and counseling. During a visit to his mother (Kathy Baker) we learn of her history of paranoid schizophrenia, which causes Curtis to suspect that may be where he's headed too.
Unable to vanquish his fears, he takes a risky loan and illegally borrows equipment from work to expand the house's tornado shelter in preparation for the apocalypse.
While Nichols doesn't stint on powerful dramatic moments, he shows equal command of intimate observations -- the tenderness between mother and daughter; the frazzled affections of marriage; the relaxed camaraderie between co-workers; the stiffness between siblings when Curtis' concerned brother (Ray McKinnon) checks in on him. In Shannon's single scene with Baker, their cautious channels of communication provide a window into years of painful distance.
Chastain is heartbreaking as a woman wondering if the person she loves has become someone else, her face dissolving into wreckage as Curtis finally explains his fears.
But every performance is of a piece with a film that never wavers in its certainty of tone, its moments of dread and jolts of terror all enhanced by David Wingo's brooding score and by a muscular soundscape.
It's hard to imagine another actor bringing such unblinking conviction to the demanding lead role. One of many gifted stage actors to come out of Chicago, Shannon's profile has shot up recently with an Oscar nomination for Revolutionary Road and a prominent role on Boardwalk Empire.
His characterization grips like a vice as he shifts from softness to menace, stillness to panic, incomprehension to crazed, purposeful illumination. When Curtis explodes and starts prophesying doom to a community hall full of locals, it's among the film's most heated moments but also its saddest, played out in the scared, bewildered faces of the people present.
The unsettling final scene is wide open to interpretation. But it's clear that Nichols is less interested in the last word on Curtis' sanity than he is in conveying how fear has become an inescapable part of our world, and how family can endure, even in the face of disaster.
The impulse to protect one’s family is strong. But what happens when that impulse becomes an addiction, when the growing sense of dread about your family’s well-being becomes so overpowering and all-encompassing that you risk losing the very family you’re trying to protect? That’s one of the questions at the heart of Take Shelter. I have started this review at least half-a-dozen times. Some versions of the review delved right into a discussion of the plot, which focuses on Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), a man who begins acting in a way increasingly perplexing to his family and friends because of his private visions of impending doom. Other versions began talking about the finesse with which director Jeff Nichols manages to take a thriller-type film and turn it into a study in paranoia and psychosis. And still other versions jumped into the technical aspects of the film, particularly its absolutely gorgeous cinematography. Ultimately, the problem I’m having is that there is so much I love about Take Shelter that I just don’t know where to begin or how to unpack it.
It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve actually seen the film (Take Shelter is one of the screenings that Dustin and I took in at Sundance last month). Having had time to reflect on it, many things stick with me, but what sticks with me most is the overall performance of Michael Shannon. Although it’s only February, and we won’t even know who will take home the Oscars from last years slate of films for another few-odd days, I have no problem predicting that Shannon is a lock for a best actor nod next year, and any actor will be hard-pressed to deliver a performance this year more deserving of taking the prize home. Because Shannon’s performance is fantastic. As the film opens, Shannon’s Curtis is having darkly disturbed dreams, which appear to border on visions, of a coming Storm. Curtis wants nothing more than to protect his family, wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), and as his dreams become more realistic and begin to bleed into his waking life, he begins to take action. This eventually leads to him putting his family into a precarious financial position as he starts building a shipping-container-based shelter under their backyard.
But the thing is, Shannon’s family has a history of mental illness. Is there really doom, which Curtis is somehow having premonitions of, or is he simply succumbing to a genetic predisposition? Curtis, himself, is unsure of the answer, yet he is unable to stop himself from moving forward, and it’s in this murky internal conflict that the film lives and breathes. And Nichols offers an amazing insight into Curtis’ perspective — the thrill of this thriller isn’t any action, but in absorbing and feeling Curtis’ own growing paranoia. It’s both riveting and stifling.
Shannon is, of course, this hulk of a man, and he is fully capable of using that to his advantage, portraying Curtis in a way way that absolutely terrifies. But Shannon’s performance offers so much more, particularly when he plays against his build, portraying this beast of a man who feels so afraid and broken because he’s not sure he can even trust his own mind anymore, nor is he sure he can do the one thing he cares about, keep his family safe. And speaking of that family, Jessica Chastain is lovely as Curtis’ wife. Samantha could have been written simplistically, taking the easy way out, but the movie makes her much a stronger, loving character — Chastain believably portrays a wife who is afraid yet resolved and understanding, and she may very well garner some award attention of her own this time next year.
As I’ve said, Nichols manages to toe the line between actual thriller and psychological thriller splendidly. The writing is deceptively complex, and visually, the film is both as wide and expansive as the farm plains of Ohio, and as narrow and taught as a collapsing mind. The cinematography is particularly gorgeous, especially during the repeated rain storms that may or not actually be taking place over the course of the film. Some may find Take Shelter’s intensely ambiguous ending a disappointment, but it’s really the perfect and only way to end the film. I can’t really say more about that ending, but it’s great, as is the film as a whole. Take Shelter is simply a stunning film.
No comments:
Post a Comment