Blue-collar construction worker, Curtis (Michael Shannon) is a man on the edge dealing with insecurity and possible anxiety-driven hallucinations in this character-driven film directed by Jeff Nichols.
There is a near-constant, non-diegetic rumbling in “Take Shelter,” writer/director Jeff Nichols’ brilliant, impeccably well-made allegorical psychodrama about a blue-collar construction worker whose hallucinations might signify more than mere mental illness. Curtis (Michael Shannon) can’t hear the helicopter-like sound, but from his small-town Ohio backyard, he can see a sky full of unexplainable phenomena, including monstrous gray thunderclouds, greasy brown rain and crows that swarm like locusts. By the time he starts building an elaborate storm shelter he can’t afford, he creates a separate dread within his wife (Jessica Chastain) and a community of onlookers, who increasingly see him as a mad outcast.
This may just be the year’s best character study, and it surely features one of the year’s finest male performances, as Shannon notches up his unassuming talent for giving grippingly plausible life to the psychologically troubled. Curtis is a man on the edge, yet one in a comfy microcosm, whose relatively stable employment, enviable health insurance, and very loving family (he also has a deaf daughter) should provide a suitable padding of safety against the outside world’s ills. But like an insurmountable addiction, his piercing sense of insecurity trumps all, and like a true prophet, he receives it as both blessing and curse, gaining possible insight into future events but also digging his own grave in the process (when his actions inevitably lead to his firing, the devastation — and, indeed, relevance — of the loss is earth-shaking).
It certainly isn’t news to say that we’re in a society on the precipice of frightening changes, and fraught with uncertainty of what’s to come. Are Curtis’ visions real or imagined? Do they represent the fallout of our ecological irresponsibilities? The rumbling terror of those straddling the poverty line? The storm of rebellion brought on by a certain group of protesters? Or are they just heralding an old-fashioned, biblical apocalypse? They stand for all, and none, of these things. For Curtis, like so many of us, is a man living in a world where nothing, and everything, is wrong.
R
Four reels out of four
Opens tomorrow at the Ritz Five
R
Available Tuesday
Few moviegoers were able to catch the critically-lauded sci-fi sleeper “Attack the Block” when it hit theaters in limited release earlier this year, but now that it’s reached video, there’s no excuse to deprive yourself of it.
Cleverly and amusingly mashing genres, director Joe Cornish pits urban thugs against aliens, and guides a cast of fresh unknowns amidst a gritty and ravaged London setting. It’s a film to tell your friends about. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
If there were as much diversity in Oscar’s other categories as there is in this year’s lineup for Live Action Short, you can bet there would be a lot less complaining about the Academy being shortsighted. The nominees, all of which hit theaters this Friday, include two intrinsically Irish dramedies, a German heart-tugger, an American film-school romp and a darkly funny Norwegian mortality tale.
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Take Shelter Michael Shannon continues to perfect the art of bringing frightening depth to the mentally unhinged in “Take Shelter,” an impeccably crafted, pseudo-apocalyptic psychodrama from writer/director Jeff Nichols, who casts Shannon as a blue-collar worker plagued by visions of impending doom. In its effortless allegorical brilliance, the film leaves wide open the possible connections between the visions and our own world’s ills, letting the resonant paranoia of Shannon’s on-the-fringes, self-dismantling outcast speak for itself. The Descendants Working from one of the year’s best scripts (which he co-wrote with Nat Faxton and Jim Rash), “Sideways” director Alexander Payne makes a triumphant return after a seven-year hiatus with “The Descendants,” a beautifully humanistic portrait of family and the real ways, both private and public, that people grieve. With a fantastic cast led by George Clooney, the Hawaii-set film makes the grand most of its rare milieu, links its themes with unassuming cleverness, and offers humor and stirring pathos without an ounce of gooey sentiment. Meek’s Cutoff Kelly Reichardt’s elliptical western “Meek’s Cutoff,” which whittles the tale of a parade of Oregon Trail deviators down to three families and one ignorant guide, is a film whose experience truly begins after the credits roll. A slow and sparse...
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