Take Shelter

Throughout the absorbing “Take Shelter,” viewers are presented with an intriguing question: is the film’s protagonist sane or insane? There are, of course, two answers to this question; either the protagonist is sane or he is insane. But deciding which of the two answers is correct proves rather tricky; even after the striking climax of the film, the “correct” answer to the question remains quite ambiguous, revealing itself to be one of those cinematic answers with a meaning that depends entirely on the personal interpretation of the viewer; this will no doubt spark a plethora of heated debates over at the film’s IMDb board.

The film’s protagonist is Curtis LaForche, who is played by Michael Shannon; you may recognise Shannon from HBO’s Prohibition era-set TV drama “Boardwalk Empire” and his Oscar-nominated turn in Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road.” Shannon has that rare ability to fully construct a character while appearing to do very little; his performance in “Take Shelter” shows this talent in full.

Curtis is a construction worker living contentedly in the suburbs of a small Ohio town. He has a loving wife, Samantha (the magnificent Jessica Chastain, “The Tree of Life”), and a sweet young daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart in her first role), who is hearing impaired. The LaForches are certainly not a rich family, but they are surviving peacefully with what they have.

Curtis has been seeing many storms forming in the sky lately; this would be normal for the area in which his family lives (they have a tornado shelter in their backyard), but the ones Curtis is witnessing are not normal storms. Yes, he hears thunder; yes, he sees lightning; yes, he gets soaked in a shower - these are all typical symptoms of an everyday storm, but this is not an everyday storm. You see, the liquid that pours down from the heavens above is not rain; it’s motor oil.

Several times throughout the film, Curtis is plagued by visions of this ominous storm which no one around him can see nor hear. These visions happen upon him both when he is asleep and when he is awake. There are slight variations in each vision; in one, he is violently attacked by the otherwise-friendly family dog; in another, the storm causes complete strangers to go mad and attack both him and Hannah. He begins to wonder: are these just dreams, are they symptoms of a mental illness or are they a God-given warning of an impending apocalypse?

Intriguing questions, no doubt, which serve to make “Take Shelter” all the more of a helplessly intriguing mystery. We, as viewers, spend much of the film attempting to solve this mystery; we are progressively handed pieces of a puzzle that we can’t help but try to piece together ourselves. I myself attempted this with much doubt in my puzzle-piecing; in the end I was still to venture anywhere near a conclusive answer, but I did not find this annoying or frustrating; indeed, I found it satisfyingly perplexing.

We follow Curtis as he himself tries to solve this mystery.  He goes to see a doctor, who prescribes him sedatives to help him sleep. He visits a local counsellor and tells her of his visions. He visits his mother, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when she was in her early thirties; could it have been passed on to him? He begins to suspect that the visions are not just dreams but are a warning, but how could he possibly know? They could mean nothing; they could mean everything.

Curtis begins to deal with the situation. Following the vision in which he was attacked by the dog, he builds a pen in the backyard for the dog to stay in. In real life, he is wary of and avoids those who attack him in his dreams. He goes to the bank for money to expand upon the tornado shelter in the backyard, just in case. He hides his intentions from his wife for fear that she wouldn’t understand. It’s a sign of Shannon’s talent that we fully support Curtis in these acts of possible overprotection and paranoia; but he’s just protecting his family, isn’t he?

It’s true; Shannon gives an incredible performance that is as powerful as it is heart-breaking. He is playing a man who is unstable and who is haunted by terrifying visions that he and he alone can see. He is worried that these visions may come true, that the end is nigh and that he may very soon lose everyone and everything he holds close to him. Shannon is fascinating as Curtis; his performance lets us sympathise with this character, even though Curtis may be completely wrong and completely cuckoo.

“Take Shelter” is a sometimes scary, sometimes devastating, sometimes poignant but always enthralling tale of a man who may or may not be losing his mind. Writer-director Jeff Nichols (“Shotgun Stories”) has made a quiet, riveting and atypical disaster movie that works without fault as both a powerful human drama and an intriguing mystery that keeps you guessing right until the very end, and even after that.

9/10