Take Shelter
Writer-director Jeff Nichols’s psychological thriller, “Take Shelter,” is as bold and exciting a look into mental illness, and how it tears at you from the inside, as any film has dared to do. That doesn’t mean it had quite the galvanizing impact critics have made it out to have since it debuted at Sundance this past January, but it has two of the best performances of this or any year at its center from Michael Shannon (one of the greatest of modern character actors) and Jessica Chastain (whose star has risen thanks to four performances in high-profile films this year), so believe me when I say it’s certainly worthy of the attention.
In the film, Shannon plays Curtis LaForche, an Ohio driller who begins to have apocalyptic visions of a storm when he sleeps. The dreams always start the same: menacing clouds in the distance; rain that seems like motor oil when it falls; two tornado funnels forming, primed for destruction. He worries for his wife, Samantha (Chastain), and their daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart), who is deaf, but he is unable to bring himself to tell anyone. He begins to act oddly: he puts the family dog, long an inside dog, outside when he has a vision of being attacked; he secretly begins seeing a counselor, as well as visits his mother (Kathy Baker), who was hospitalized with schizophrenia at around the same age Curtis is now; and he also begins adding on to the old storm shelter in his backyard in preparation for…something.
Mental illness is arguably the most prevalent, and least understood, of what some would call the “invisible diseases.” Well, least understood by those who do not suffer from some sort of mental illness, at least. When a type of generalized fear, or anxiety, takes over an individual, it can turn them into a shell of the person they really are. They withdraw from friends and family; they break out into spontaneous fits of crying and physical ailments, such as seizures or bedwetting; and they can grow paranoid and unsure of their worth to those around them. Nichols doesn’t side-step these truths of mental illness, or the emotional repercussions these visions have on Curtis, which is a large part of the film’s power. He doesn’t put easy answers in front of his characters or the audience, as the harder Curtis tries to overcome these fears, the further he moves away from the rational world, which leads to a great deal of fear and emotional pain for Samantha and Hannah. Nichols’s film doesn’t simply focus on internal issues, however; the director uses visual effects brilliantly to bring Curtis’s visions to life– in particular, the image of birds swooping, and falling, from the sky, as well as the whopper of a finale, tops any of the chaos in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in dramatic impact.
Nichols doesn’t completely succeed, however; maybe it’s because of my own personal struggles with anxiety and depression, as well as the real struggles of friends and loved ones, but the film’s emotional impact was lessened more than I expected. That shouldn’t be a reflection on the actors, or Nichols, however; the director, Shannon (whose descent into an emotional abyss is riveting to watch), and Chastain (who shows the talent that seemed to be wasted, to an extent, in “The Tree of Life”) have made a film where the images, and ideas, burn themselves into a viewer’s memory.
