Take Shelter

From Jeff Nichols, who directed a film I enjoyed quite a bit, SHOTGUN STORIES, is TAKE SHELTER, a psychological drama starring a couple of people from his last film. Notably, Michael Shannon gives a riveting performance of madness, or what might be madness, from the perspective of a man who sees that he has all the signs of going crazy, but finds it hard to accept such a thing. It begins with dreams of storms, and then of his dog attacking him, his neighbors, his friends. He feels an impending doom, hears thunder when there isn't a cloud in the sky, smells fluid near his house. In preparation, he begins to build a shelter, taking money out of his family's account frivolously for the pure purpose of building the storm shelter. His best friend begins to question him, his wife (Jessica Chastain) cries as she watches his descent and knows where it's all going. Even his deaf daughter knows something's up, but he goes crazy anyway. What I admired about TAKE SHELTER other than Shannon's performance and some very decent cinematography, was that Shannon's character can see all the signs of impending insanity, and yet he acts as if this weren't so. I think that we all trust ourselves to a great extent, and that Shannon's character under such scrutiny just adamantly cannot accept such a fact. The end of the film changes this too, and although I liked the twist at the end, I feel as if it was a bit of a cheat to liven the film up. Nevertheless, the film as-is was enjoyable, despite a few scenes or directorial decisions that felt forced.

★★★ out of Five