Take Shelter
Review by Anthony Morris
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Take Shelter
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Curtis (Michael Shannon) is a hard-working family man in rural
America who, out of nowhere, starts having dreams of a coming disaster.
Storm clouds brew, tornadoes touch down, and a chemical rain that could
be petrol or blood begins to fall.
If they were just regular dreams
perhaps he could cope with that, but they quickly mount in intensity :
when he dreams his dog attacks him, he can no longer bear to have it
around.
And these dreams leach into his waking life too. "Does anybody
see that?" he says as a lightning storm flashes on the horizon.
Soon
he's vastly expanding the family's tornado shelter in the back yard,
even as he reads books on mental illness at the local library. And all
the while his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) watches, increasingly
concerned at what his increasingly erratic behaviour means for her and
their deaf daughter.
Undeniably effective and skilfully constructed, Take Shelter is a hard film to judge in some ways because what it sets out to
do – and achieves admirably – is to leave you feeling like you've had a
two hour anxiety attack.
Horrendously tense – the dream sequences are
as close to actual nightmares as anything put on film, and their effect
on Shannon (who gives a gripping and completely convincing performance
as a man barely holding on) is devastating – this is a film where a
happy ending would presumably involve Curtis not losing his mind.
That
is, the end of the world.
Take Shelter isn't a film you'll forget in a hurry,
even if the experience of watching it isn't exactly what you’d call
enjoyable : oppressive and harrowing, this all-too-real look at the
progression and effects of mental illness (even if the questions of
whether Curtis is actually ill is an open one), is easily one of the
most powerful films of the year. 4.5 out
of 5
Take Shelter
Australian release: 13th October,
2011
Official
Site: Take Shelter
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain and Shea Whigham
Director: Jeff Nichols
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