The Metropolis

Take Shelter

Rebecca Sear | Wednesday 31 August, 2011 12:19

Director/writer : Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain and Shea Whigham

Living in rural Ohio, Curtis LaForche’s life is devoted to providing for his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their young deaf daughter. Curtis is becoming increasingly aware of the weather turning – yet strong, unexpected gales and swirling mauve cloud formations signify more than just an electrical storm. He becomes obsessed with refurbishing the family’s storm shelter, an endeavour which is increasingly entwined throughout with his mental state. Here is a film which deals well with the effects of mental illness on loved ones and competently communicates the feeling of losing one’s grasp of reality, albeit in a way which is a touch too simplistic.

Paced at just the right speed, the story manages to impart a hastening sense of looming trauma despite very little actually happening. The audience sees Curtis’ hum drum life be gradually dismantled by not only his own neurosis but the response of his family to his problems. Whilst friends and acquaintances struggle to understand him, sleep brings no avail from his troubling apocalyptic visions, and he finds little solace in counsellors. Take Shelter is a well informed and sensitive example of how close personal relationships can be affected by mental illness; his doting wife is played by Jessica Chastain who completes their very authentic portrayal of a young couple desperate to retain their sense of normality. A particularly upsetting scene comes as Samantha cajoles Curtis into attending a community dinner with her. Confrontations about Curtis’ recent behaviour and undisguised sideways glances cause him to breakdown explosively, and the sense of stigma and inevitability which accompanies this very normal situation that might occur a thousand times over in small town America is very palpable.

If my memory of GCSE English Literature serves me well, ‘pathetic fallacy’ as this whole weather-imitating-characters’-emotions thing is called (generally only by 16 year olds looking for an A* and a social life) is what Nichols was aiming at here. Whilst using tempestuous weather to help tell a story is a classic literary technique, one feels that it is perhaps relied on too heavily here. The audience is well prepared for the scene in the storm shelter, which is horrendously claustrophobic, and visually effective, but at the same time feels like it lacks a certain sophistication. Perhaps it is supposed to be brilliant in its simplicity, but it could certainly use a less obvious metaphor. The ending, however, is superb and was reminiscent of the finale of the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man: tumultuous and uncertain, yet somehow hopeful all at once.

Take Shelter is a film which deserves much praise for its original screenplay which tries to do nothing more than communicate a simple yet powerful story. It’s beautiful and it’s provocative, and it will certainly be ignored by swathes of cinemagoers that require Daniel Craig in a tight t-shirt fighting some aliens to have a good time.

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