'Take Shelter' probes dark dreams of high anxiety
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Michael Shannon.
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No one does anxiety and intensity better than Michael Shannon, and by the time "Take Shelter" is over, you may wish pharmacies sold anti-anxiety meds over the counter.
He plays Curtis LaForche, an Ohio working-class husband and father of a 6-year-old deaf girl who begins to have apocalyptic dreams and visions, typically involving the people in his life as victims or attackers. They're positively biblical, often starting with lightning, banks of black storm clouds and rain resembling dirty droplets of motor oil.
When he tries to protect his family by enlarging the storm shelter in his backyard, he seemingly solves one problem and creates three more. Curtis' tower of worry is teetering, and it could buckle under the fear that he is showing signs of the same paranoid schizophrenia that devastated a parent.
- Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain.
- Rating: R for some language.
"Take Shelter" also stars the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as Curtis' wife, Samantha, and Kathy Baker as his mother, Sarah. But this movie belongs to Mr. Shannon, who crawls inside a cauldron of worries and slams the door shut with us inside, leaving us with our own free-floating anxiety and strategies for coping and escaping.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols started the screenplay in summer 2008 when he was a newlywed with a nagging feeling the world was heading for harder times. As it turned out, the stock market crashed that fall although Mr. Nichols suggests in a director's statement in the press notes that his anxiety was driven by growing up and finally having things in his life he didn't want to lose.
In "Take Shelter," Curtis has much to lose. As a pal tells him, "You got a good life, Curtis. I think that's the best compliment you can give to a man."
That life includes his wife, daughter, job as crew chief for a sand-mining company and a best friend, played by Shea Whigham, Sheriff Elias "Eli" Thompson on HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."
The LaForches aren't living large, but they can try to weather the economic storm thanks to his salary and health insurance and her side business selling hand-embroidered items. After all, as one character suggests, "You take your eye off the ball one minute in this economy and you're screwed."
And Curtis does take his eye off the ball when it's drawn to the ominous skies where the birds appear and the lightning crackles and the ferocious storm clouds sweep in, or to the TV with its steady diet of daily, deadly, photogenic disasters. Chlorine spills, gas cloud on the move!
"Take Shelter," which played to a full house during the Three Rivers Film Festival, returns for a regular run at the Regent Square Theater on Friday. If justice prevails, it should earn Mr. Shannon (a mentally ill mathematician in "Revolutionary Road") another Oscar nomination, this time in the leading actor category.
The picture will keep you guessing -- and talking -- about whether Curtis is a prophet of doom or disaster or sufferer of dark fantasies and mental illness. Sometimes, being able to weather a storm, in your head or on the horizon, is all about the others taking shelter with, and for, you.
First Published December 29, 2011 12:00 am
