4/10
Curtis (Michael
Shannon) is having bad dreams. Bad
dreams are a bit low key to accurately describe what he dreams at night;
absolute night terrors works better. He
dreams his faithful dog suddenly attacks him and takes a chunk out of his arm
and later he dreams his best buddy stabs him with a pickax. There is no warning these events would ever
occur in reality, but for some reason, Curtis’s arm still aches the rest of the
day after the dog dream.
This sounds like the setup to a horror film but Take
Shelter is far from that genre.
Curtis has more than a stirring suspicion at what is really going on in
his head. When his mother was his age,
she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and has spent the rest of her
life in assisted living because of it.
This scenario scares Curtis more than anything in the world because just
before these dreams, he was a very happy and loving family man.
His wife, Samantha (Jessica
Chastain) spends the majority of her time taking care of their deaf
daughter and creating handicrafts to sell at the local neighborhood yard
sale. Their family is not rich, but
Curtis has a steady job in drilling and they get by. However, these sudden dreams and later on
hallucinations are starting to take their toll on the family harmony. Curtis feels something is coming. He does not know exactly what it is, but he
tries to describe it as the ultimate storm anyone has ever seen.
To prepare, he starts renovating an old storm shelter in the
backyard, at significant cost. Most of
these things he does without informing his wife which upsets her even
more. Samantha is well aware of what
happened to Curtis’s mother and just like his friends and neighbors, and even Curtis
himself, starts to worry just how far down the rabbit hole these actions are going
to go.
Take Shelter smartly takes into account the current life and
times of its rural Ohio setting. Curtis
knows he is lucky to have a job because a lot of people do not and times are
rough out there for the unemployed. They
show how hard it is to muddle through the healthcare bureaucracy to see the
correct doctor signed off by the insurance company for the correct procedure
they are willing to pay for. They are
just as shocked at pharmacy co-pays as everyone else is.
What does not work and sets the film back is its
pacing. I do not shy away from what some
folks refer to as ‘slow’ cinema but Take Shelter can really test your patience
and stamina. There is not a lot of action
and movement here and there is no increased amount of dialogue to make up for
it. There is a huge amount of time
devoted to watching Curtis’s face, wincing cheekbones, and the troubling
weather on the horizon which may or may not be real.
This is a huge burden for actor Michael Shannon but as he
usually does, he provides a remarkable performance. I would support his name being mentioned
around Oscar time for his work here. He
has been outstanding before, especially in Revolutionary Road, and his Curtis
character here is somewhat reminiscent of other characters he has played with
mental issues in Bug and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Jessica Chastain does not have near as many
sustained one on one solo shots with the camera but she shows once again why
she has come out of nowhere to be this year’s breakthrough actress. It seems she is in a film once a month
nowadays with The Tree of Life, The Help, The Debt, and now Take
Shelter. I had never heard her
name before May of this year and now she is showing up everywhere.
Take Shelter is also getting rave reviews from the established
critics. Ebert gave it four stars and it
won the Critics Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. What am I missing? The acting is top notch but the script is
sparse, the pacing is snail-paced, and there is not much else to make up for
that. I do not recommend anyone go see
this because it more than just feels empty, it really is. There is no substance to wrap yourself
around. There is Michael Sheen of
course, but he just cannot shoulder the weight all by himself without some
additional help from the writer.
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