Reviews – Film: Take Shelter
by Suzan Ryan , under Reviews, Web Exclusives
Take Shelter
Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon
Sony Pictures
Take Shelter has been a long time coming to the big screen, given that it premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was summarily acquired by Sony Pictures in January.
Michael Shannon stars as family man Curtis who is plagued by dreams about the end of the world. Such is the impact of Curtis’ dreams that he starts to plan for their occurrence.
An unfortunate dream early on in the piece about his dog attacking him leads to Curtis forcing the inside dog outside and behind a fence. And when Curtis’ dreams begin to consistently reflect a storm of biblical proportions, he starts to work on fortifying the family’s dusty storm shelter.
Fearing what his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) will think, Curtis tries to keep his storm shelter renovations a secret. But there’s only so much discrete potentiality when trying to drop a shipping container in the backyard to expand the storage potential of your existing storm shelter.
The problem is that their hearing-impaired daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) requires life-changing surgery that’s dependent on Curtis’ job-supplied life insurance. And considering he’s been borrowing company equipment to work on the storm shelter, Samantha is less than impressed.
Even though Curtis believes enough in his apocalyptic visions to start taking measures to protect his family from their potentiality, he’s not completely without reason. He secretly seeks professional help, protecting his family on two fronts: from his probable failing sanity and from the humanity-destroying storm that he believes is coming.
To reap the real rewards of Take Shelter, you’ll have to be prepared for a slow burn. Although Curtis’ dreams/visions are quite frequent and intense, the pacing of the film is very slow.
In fact, it’s a difficult watch in parts because of the constant dichotomy of the small family drama versus the constant musing over whether Curtis’ dreams will prove him sane or insane.
Even though Take Shelter does a good job of balancing out the potential insanity versus potential apocalypse push and pull, the further you get into the film, the more apparent it is that it can only end in one of those ways. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At the point where I started losing interest, Michael Shannon showed his acting diversity in a Curtis-versus-town confrontation scene that’s well worth the lead up. Thankfully, the ending also comes together in a wholly satisfying way that rewards the patient viewer.
Take Shelter may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for patient viewers looking for a different type of film with a strong character focus, this both impresses and, thankfully, makes a whole lot of sense by the time the credits roll.
TAKE SHELTER opens nationally on October 13, 2011
Review: Nathan Lawrence
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