Take Shelter

365 Films

Entry #86

Take Shelter (2011)

Directed by Jeff Nichols

Every director fears the potential sophomore slump while others are possessed by a creative zeal that vaults their work into a rarified stratosphere.  Perhaps Jeff Nichols was relieved when his debut Shotgun Stories, while critically adored, made hardly a dent at the box office.  It allowed his follow-up, Take Shelter to sneak up on an unsuspecting public and handily knock them for a loop.  Keeping in alignment with Shotgun’s slow-burn style while dramatically ramping up the cinematic tools at his disposal, Nichole has created a piece that is a cinematic cousin to its predecessor while remaining uniquely mysterious and ambiguous.  Take Shelter tells the story of Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), an Ohio family man who begins to have dreams of an apocalyptic nature and whose subsequent obsession with protecting his family from his visions turning into reality nearly drives him to personal and financial ruin.  Jessica Chastain plays his wife Samantha, and her performance is a marvel of marital strength in the face of overwhelming circumstances.   Shannon matches her beat for beat and one of the impressive accomplishments of Take Shelter is its confident, mature grasp on married life and the two actors in particular take that ball and run with it.  It’s quite a leap from the boys will be boys attitude of Shotgun Stories and a pleasant reminder that Mr. Nichols has only begun to scratch the surface of his talent.  It is very easy to imagine a version of this story where the wife character comes off as a heartless nag who in any other version of reality would have left her crazy husband years ago.  What Chastain and Nichols do with the character is all together remarkable and in their own quiet way, Samantha becomes the heart and soul of the story.  As her husband’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, we never doubt the strength of conviction in Samantha.  She is not just staying with him because she vowed to do so, she is staying with him because she loves him and wants him to break free of the nightmarish visions that have been plaguing him.  This might all sound like standard boilerplate but I can’t stress enough how gifted this Nichols fella is.  He accumulates all of these complex emotional readings scene-by-scene and almost literally beat-by-beat.  We are watching this family become radically altered by the events of the story in real time.  We can understand every single action and it makes the climax of the film all the more shattering.  This is where I really want to single out and sing the praises of Michael Shannon.  He does an incredibly difficult thing in this film because he has to convey a tormented psyche but never allow it to completely dominate the character.  He never tips his hand too much in one direction or another as to whether or not Curtis himself actually believes in his mental doomsday scenarios.  It is mesmerizing to watch this man fight tooth and nail to protect his family while realizing he is in fact the very thing he is fighting.  The last scene of the film (and if you haven’t seen it yet, I implore you to stop right here) is a tour de force for Chastain and Shannon.  Shannon cowers in the corner of his roided up storm shelter like a wounded animal in a cage, eyes daring nervously for any kind of comfort in what he thinks is a newly shattered world.  And Chastain, completely with him every step of the way musters up every ounce of courage she has to prove to her husband that no matter what is on the other side of that shelter door, she will be there with him to face it.  It’s a shattering climax and one that is beautifully capped off by the film’s enigmatic final shot.  I have my theories, you’ll have yours, but one thing is for sure.  In these final moments that wrap up a tremendous piece of cinematic story telling, Jeff Nichols has proven himself to be the best new American director of this young century.