Movie Review : Take Shelter (2011)
Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Michael Shannon
Jessica Chastain
Directed By:
Jeff Nichols
I take a certain juvenile pride is telling you that I have watched TAKE SHELTER on Harold Camping's predicted apocalypse date. It probably means nothing to you, since it's a recent movie and most of you haven't seen it yet, but once you will you're going to understand what kind of terrifying ordeal I have went through. While the doomsday omen predictably turned out to be bullshit, TAKE SHELTER almost achieved to blurred the line at the end of the day. It's a very efficient psychological thriller that walks a fine line in between an apocryphal threat and mental disease. Thanks to AT for dragging Josie and me in the theaters to see this. The man is so much more on the ball than me with new movies. TAKE SHELTER is slow, dark, atmospheric and incredibly fucking mean spirited. In other words, it's my kind of movie.
Smart movies often do that. Their action is slow and mundane, but the tension is razor sharp and signs of a deeper, more visceral intrigue are scattered around, sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden in the picture perfect game of Michael Shannon. He plays Curtis, a family man in his thirties who's afflicted with terrible nightmares. In fact, they are night terrors. Nightmares from which you wake up screaming and still feel the effects when you're awake. He's dreaming of a storm, of oily rain and people going crazy. The dreams often take extension into his reality. He has delusions (his arm hurts after he dreamed that his dog bit him) and straight out hallucinations (he sees a panicked bird flock in the sky, hears thunder on a sunny day, etc.) While Curtis is scared to be afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia like his mother, he doesn't know what he should do of those dreams. So he starts building a storm shelter to protect his family, the only thing he holds dear in the world, despite the judgment of his neighbors who all think he went crazy like his mom.
Let me tell you about Michael Shannon. I have discovered the depth of his acting game in Werner Herzog's MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE, but I didn't understand how accurate Herzog's casting pick was until I saw TAKE SHELTER. Michael Shannon is an actor who channels the very essence of the legendary Klaus Kinski, who was Herzog's muse and a man who had a post-doctoral education in playing violent nut cases. He puts this inner psychopath to fruition in TAKE SHELTER, it's not even funny. He is terrified and terrifying. Shannon has already been nominated for the Oscars for his supporting role in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, but I think he will be nominated this year again, for the leading honors. It's by far the most convincing lead performance I've seen this year. He's better than Ryan Gosling in drive (strangely, he's not that much more talkative). Just wait for that community dinner scene. It's crushing and beautiful.
While Shannon spearheads the movie, he's not the only shining star. Jessica Chastain is also really good as his loving but frightened-as-all-hell wife, but it's the director Jeff Nichols who takes the silver medal in this movie. He shows a genuine research about hallucinations and doesn't turn it into a freak show. Curtis is exposed to images and feelings that could very well be true or just the creation of his mind. TAKE SHELTER is also beautifully paced, although you have to have a stomach for the slow approach for watching it. It's a movie that takes its sweet time, so it can scare you more efficiently. What makes it more realistic and less of a "peak a boo" movie is that it plays on a fear that everybody has. Vampires, monsters, zombies, serial killers and other boogeymen all require a higher level of suspension of disbelief than our own demise, in those turbulent times. TAKE SHELTER's low key, almost quiet approach will work its way on you like an hacksaw, if you don't need fast paced action and Hollywood editing to be happy. It requires a certain cinematographic culture that goes beyond the blockbuster approach to appreciate, but it packs mean power.
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