Review of Take Shelter (2011) by Cailin T — 08 Sep 2012

Note: This review does contain spoilers. Read at your own discretion.

I'll need to see this film again before I can give it a proper review, but I wanted to leave my initial thoughts.

Upon initial inspection, one would suspect this film to be your run-of-the-mill psychological thriller about a man's apparent nervous breakdown, but the psychological themes of this film seem to take a backseat to the heart of the matter, to the nuclear family dynamic during a deep economic recession.

Take Shelter is a powerful film. That much cannot be denied. The entire film feels tight, intense, and intimate, a familiar portrait of the struggles we all face, when times are tough and we're barely squeaking by.

Curtis, Samantha, and their daughter, Hannah, are such a familiar family that we feel like we already know them right off the bat. They are the common, average, and very middle class American family that litter the country in every region. They are your next door neighbors. They are your friends. They might even be you. Except that Hannah is disabled. Hannah is deaf. This is important later.

The LaForche family are dealing with what we all deal with, how to continue to stay alive, happy, and healthy when money is tight. We all know this struggle. We all feel it. That's the core of this film, at its most simple and most basic.

What sets the film apart from other family-portrait style films is that Curtis struggles profoundly with fear and psychosis throughout the film. He has dreams about a storm that he believes is coming. The dreams get more and more intense, dreams that are so real that they begin to take over his life. Paranoia ensures. He begins preparing for the storm of his dreams, building a complex and elaborate new storm shelter in his backyard. Why does Curtis feel the need to do this so rapidly, other than the fact that he truly believes the storm is going to happen? Isn't it obvious?

He needs to be prepared. He needs to protect his family. That's what his fears are really about. Not about a storm, but trying to stay afloat, keep his family protected and happy, while dealing with his daughter's medical bills and dealing with the average expenses that we all have to deal with, all on a modest income.

Or at least that's what we think. At least that's how it starts.

Things get worse for Curtis, as his sanity seems to slip away from him, and his dreams become more vivid, more physical, more real. By the end of the film, reality is blended so well with his dream world, that we as an audience aren't sure what's real and what's not. Is there a storm brewing, after all?

The technical aspects of this film are superb. The acting is outstanding on all fronts, both Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain so beautifully average that they literally feel like all of us. Their relationship is so much about body language, about lingering glances and movement and fluidity, that we fall into them without question and without hesitation. We just... become them.

The lighting in this film was breathtaking. There were moments, half alight and half in shadow, that were so profoundly beautiful, that I wanted to take a freeze frame of the shot and just stare at it, like a piece of artwork.>.

What makes this film even more special is the way it blends the "real" world with Curtis' "dream world." The transitions are some of the most flawless I've ever seen, beautifully laid out and woven seamlessly throughout the film.

There are two outstanding scenes in this film, which almost took my breath away in their intensity and intimacy and emotional depth. One scene, where Curtis finally looses it and pours out a beautiful, emotional, tirade, had me on the edge of my seat, mouth agape, as his calm was driven away by his terror. What really made this scene stand out, however, was his wife's reaction to his outburst. She didn't look at him with horror, or shock, or disgust, despite the fact that he had just caused a huge, embarrassing scene. No, she looked at him with concern, with pity, with love, and held him, then lead him out of the room all without a word.

Later in the film (SPOILER!) when they're in the storm shelter together after a storm actually does hit, Curtis and his wife have a beautiful, vivid, and outstanding moment together that easily became my favorite moment of the film. "You have to do it," his wife speaks to him softly, delicately. "You have to do it or nothing will change." She's speaking, of course, of him letting go of his fear and walking outside into the light after the storm has subsided. He cannot do it, though. He is too afraid. Too much has been leading up to this moment, too much of his supposed sanity is at stake. He doesn't want to open the door, afraid that the storm will suck him away, or that his sanity will be lost altogether if the storm really hadn't hit after all. It was such a beautiful and intimate moment between the two of them, so much happening and so much being stated with so few words. Is it all real? What's happening, we wonder along with Curtis? Was there a storm at all?

In the end, this film struck a cord with me, one that left lingering emotions and questions and concerns clinging to my chest. It left a dent, an impact that I'm still feeling today, still feeling now, wondering if Curtis will be okay, if Hannah's surgery will go well, and if Samantha was able to calm her husband's fears.

In the end, I wanted everything to be okay. In the end, I needed it to be. That, that emotional connection, is what filmmaking is all about.