Take Shelter

Released: November 25th 2011 (UK)

Directed By: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain

Certificate: 15

Reviewed By: Phillippe Ostiguy

After seeing handfuls of empty character studies aiming only to carve the central performance a spot at the Oscars (I’m looking at you, Frankie & Alice), one could reasonably wonder if the psychological drama had run out of things to say. It has come a long way, it’s true, a long way from Catherine Deneuve’s grotesque delusions in Polanski’s genre-defining classic Repulsion, and it has given us masterpieces ranging from Memento to Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy, but has become increasingly, perhaps excessively common when it should be reserved for the most careful, caring of filmmakers. Its stories are too human and too close to bear being hastily told.

So no, you couldn’t be blamed for rolling your eyes upon hearing Take Shelter, yet another one, was showing at your local theatre last weekend, but yes, you could be for missing it. Jeff Nichols demonstrates a beautiful understanding of the genre, reminding us just how loudly it can resonate. He’s patient, showing us how his character, Curtis, drifts away, away from the shore, farther still. Away from the people around him, his wife, his daughter – and how completely, achingly aware of it he is. How he finds it more and more difficult to fulfill his duties as an employee, a husband and a father as something of a paranoid schizophrenia blooms inside of him. How his nightmares are so vivid they frighten him even awake, altering his doings and his relationships. How he foresees a near-apocalyptic storm and commits to building a tornado shelter in his backyard, using money he doesn’t have, using money his wife and he need for their daughter’s medical expenses.