Take Shelter (2011): exploiting generic permutation for thrills

Take Shelter is all about the actors.

Michael Shannon, who I know most prominently from HBO’s tremendous drama series Boardwalk Empire, provides a fascinating portrayal of the main character, Curtis.  An experienced actor, Shannon normally fills supporting roles, however Take Shelter proves he can provide a captivating lead performance at feature length too.  Shannon is particularly suited to antagonistic characters so his place as the thwarted hero in Take Shelter makes an interesting addition to his profile.  I suspect, however, there’s a likelihood he’ll be forever typecast as the villain following his performance as General Zod in the upcoming Superman film Man of Steel.

Curtis is a simple and honest man, living and working in a small Midwestern town with his beautiful wife (Jessica Chastain) and deaf daughter.  Curtis embodies the characteristics of the all-American man: pride, confidence, rationality and the alpha-male, breadwinning instinct to protect his family and their happiness.  Shannon effectively portrays this character, who could almost be clichéd were it not for Shannon’s ability to subtly develop him into something more complex as his mental stability deteriorates throughout the film.  Curtis is never over-acted by Shannon and remains engrossing and delightfully plausible for the most part.  However, there is one badly written scene at the end of the second act which seemed like needless dramatic sensation and didn’t suit the character at all.  Not really Shannon’s fault and, in fact, he and Chastain did well on a couple of occasions to try to understate any particularly overtly dramatic moments in the script – most notably the closing scene, of which more later.

Jessica Chastain provides a dynamic performance as Curtis’ wife, Samantha, a loving, compassionate and god-fearing homemaker.  As with Curtis, she starts the film as a character who is almost too idealistic and is also somewhat marginalized.  As the plot thickens, though, her emotional depth is revealed and she becomes engaging and surprising.  This character is particularly attractive in that she demonstrates an uncompromising loyalty to her husband in the face of an adversity that was instigated by her husband.  In an age when the definition of the word marriage is, frankly, anyone’s guess, Samantha’s persevering trust is an undeniably charming characteristic and makes a refreshing change to a majority of the heroines of modern cinema.

Despite the fact that the film won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes, among other awards and rightfully received acclaim, I think there are a number of criticisms to be made.  The film is dry at times, in my opinion, probably because it suffers from a kind of auteur syndrome.  It was both written and directed by Jeff Nichols alone and so is necessarily restricted to his creative vision.  As a result of this, the film can occasionally feel hollow.  Any character outwith the main three are shallow and one-dimensional.  It’s apparent that all minor characters are written to fill a specific narrative purpose, rather than exist as part of an organic story.  Whenever any of the minor characters are given any kind of idiosyncrasies, it comes across as decoration to their character and is painfully contrived.   There are a number of unexplained ambiguities, too, for example the fact that Curtis’ daughter apparently has the ability to sense the storm that plagues Curtis’ existence.  It isn’t just the characters that lack an extra dimension, but the story too: there is a distinct lack of subtext and subplot, giving the film a stifled air of artifice.

Nichols has perhaps over-simplified minor characters and plot lines for a purpose though.  One of the film’s most redeeming features is that it travels between genres, fluidly and enjoyably.  The film is quite a straight character drama, in the first instance, but progresses into borrowing heavily from psychological thriller and, more interestingly, apocalyptic horror.  There are hints of zombies, supernatural disturbance and divine retribution, but you are never sure if they are instances of Curtis’ own personal psychosis, or if they represent something more real and impending.  This aspect of the film is gripping and you never suspect when Nichols switches the flick from sober drama to paranormal thriller.  For this overall design and the merging of genres to work, Nichols has minimized plot and character complexity - perhaps sacrificed them.

Clearly expert in exploiting the conventions of various genres, it seems Nichols has merely borrowed the quiet style of arthouse character drama only to provide a stark and terrifying contrast to his unexpected moments of horror.  I don’t object to mixing genres, unless it’s to purely facilitate momentary sensationalism or to pull a veil of plausibility over viewers’ eyes to then present them with a ridiculously far-fetched conclusion.

The ending gives the entire film a new meaning, but at the expense of inflicting serious detriment to plausibility, suspension of disbelief and, subsequently, appreciation of the whole film.  As enjoyable as the performances are, the blending of genres and the technical elements of the film, Nichols writes quite thinly and has a tendency for sensationalism that is somewhat contradictory to the films otherwise naturalistic feel.  Jeff Nichols can write a film as a whole, but it seems he needs to work on making his minor characters more real and his stories more multidimensional.  Either that, or fully realise his desire for sensationalism and step away from the more delicate realm of arthouse-esque character drama.

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Oslo, 31 August (2011)

Oslo can be considered both an adaptation of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle’s 1931 novel Le feu follet and a remake of Louis Falle’s 1963 film of the same name.  Changing the Parisian setting and French names with an Oslo setting and Norwegian names, the story is essentially the same.  It is the story of a young recovering addict who has spent a period in a rehabilitation clinic and is struggling to reconnect with his friends, family, society and himself.  At the most basic level this story is about drug addiction.  Its span of 80 years proves the story’s resonance throughout modern history.  Its tragic nature (without giving too much away) proves that society still hasn’t come up with any resolutions for this recurring tale.

Although the film can be classed as minimalist in the sense the main character’s conflict is internal and the plot is focused on a mere 24 hour period, it maintains a classical structure through the consistent presence of causality.  One small action leads to another and this cause-effect progression constantly drives the story forward beat by beat.  Although the film is minimal in a lot of respects, the plot is rich and well developed and there is never a dead frame.  To make a film both minimalist and captivating is testament to the screenwriting ability of Eskil Vogt and director Joachim Trier.

The sober rationality of the young Norwegian intellectual classes provides a perfectly blank canvas on which to paint the conversely complex neuroses of the anti-hero, Anders.  Anders is an intelligent and gifted opinionist and writer, but his addiction has left him riddled with insecurity.  The film focuses on the most pivotal moment of this young man’s life as he’s tragically stuck between recovery and regression: that moment is both sprinkled with glimmers of hope and drenched in melancholia.  Anders’ contradiction is the eternal paradox of the addict, and perhaps Trier is presenting it as an allegory of the modern human condition.

A couple of the main themes of this piece are dependence and reliability.  Anders is at a stage of his life where he needs people to be there to support him, but the people in his life are at a stage where they have given up trying to support him.  As much as they try to help him, it’s clear Anders is extremely high maintenance – too much to sustain through his increasingly erratic behaviour.  There is a distinct absence of Anders’ family in the film and the friends he has are unreliable.  Anders is highly egocentric and constantly in need of a crutch, whether that’s a lover, family, friends, drugs or suicide, but there’s a vulnerable and childlike part of Anders that’s highly relatable, making his story ever more heart wrenching.

Anders Danielsen Lie gives an incredible performance as the enigmatic hero and the acting throughout is consistently authentic, convincing and engrossing.  The soft-focus cinematography (Jakob Ihre) works well with a particularly engaging sound design which, along with very conscious direction, editing and general production design, makes for technically masterful cinema with an aesthetic that is both selectively minimal and enjoyably rich.

Oslo is a tragedy.  Its simple, melancholic tone and metropolitan landscapes make the film undeniably reminiscent of the French New Wave - think Hiroshima Mon Amour in present day Oslo.  The film is minimal and stylized, presenting social realism in an artistic form without losing any of its dramatic potency to surrealism.  Utterly convincing and captivating: an instant indie classic.

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Dr Stangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Black humour, I’ve learned, truly is the way to my heart.  I stopped worrying and learned to love this film immediately.  Kubrick masters the art of black humour in Dr Strangelove, casting a satirical eye over the shortcomings of modern man, making this film one of the most potent pieces of reflective cinema in history.  Nazism, racism, eugenics, nuclear warfare, anti-communist conspiracy, propagandistic brainwashing, bureaucratic corruption, insanity and the apocalypse: all heavy, heavy issues.  Kubrick brings these behemoths to their knees with his timely execution of irony, satire and the inappropriate joke.

“Life is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.” Horace Walpole

Black humour is about subverting the darkest of issues with a treatment of comedy.  When you think about life, it is hilarious.  It is the divine comedy.  Whenever you’re reflecting on something tragic that’s happened in your own life, there’s always that tiny part of your brain dying to make the most unsavoury of jokes.  That part of your brain is called Stanley Kubrick.  In Dr Strangelove, Kubrick harnesses the power of the absurd to expose the contradictions of seemingly powerful men and the ultimate futility of war.  In order to most effectively provide an argument against nuclear deterrence, hateful prejudice, anti-communism and bureaucracy (among others), Kubrick ridicules them all with his cripplingly potent black humour.  He stepped back from the debate, stopped feeling, started thinking and started laughing.  This is how he learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.  In my opinion, humour is the single most effective way to put across a wholly humanist point of view on the most controversial of ethical issues.

“The richest kind of laughter is the laughter in response to things people would ordinarily never laugh at.” Bill Hicks

Peter Watkins’ 1965 drama documentary The War Game supplied an altogether different argument against the nuclear arms race.  Watkins dramatized a full-scale nuclear assault on Britain, which aimed for nuclear disarmament by terrifying the authorities with the apocalyptic consequences of nuclear warfare.  The film was banned, but its message was clear and valid and became a powerful piece of propaganda for the CND.  However, this approach means the whole debate is validated by clear support of one side over the other.  Propaganda is a dirty word and propaganda will always be propaganda to the opposition.  Propaganda is always propaganda, no matter what side it’s rooting for.  Satire is completely unique in that the producer doesn’t take a side, but steps back and points out how ultimately ridiculous the whole thing is.  It helps put things into perspective, as in a pointless argument, when both turn sides step back and say “wait, are we really arguing about this?”  The tactic of subversion by humour is, in my opinion, the absolute utilitarian stance: not only is an argument avoided, but it’s bloody entertaining too.

Post-Hollywood Blacklist era, Dr Strangelove avoids being labelled as either anti-HUAC or pro-communist.  The film sits in perfect tension between rubbishing the ridiculous communist conspiracies (typical of characters like Gen. Buck Turgidson and Gen. Jack Ripper during the post-war HUAC-dominated America) and validating them.  The film is rife with this kind of irony, summed up best by the eternal line:

“You can’t fight in here, this is the war room” delivered by none other than Kubrick’s President of the United States, Merkin Muffley

Released in 1964, Dr Strangelove capitalizes on the tension of global post-war paranoia and the tragic, blood-stained past to crack the most inappropriate jokes to devastating effect.  Kubrick’s black humour in Dr Strangelove was the joke needed to break the ice of the cold war – and despite its specific subject matter in this respect, his tendency to subvert conflict with comedy is universally appreciable. Dr Strangelove has the effect of La Grande Illusion, The War Game and Nuit et Brouillard rolled into one and injected with an infectious and hilarious absurdity.  It is completely unique and the quintessential cold-war-era-HUAC satire.  Probably my favourite film of all time.

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Jack Goes Boating (2010)

Yesterday was the UK release date for Philip Seymour Hoffman's first directorial effort Jack Goes Boating.  So I popped into my local independent cinema to give it a watch (£4 a ticket on a Friday afternoon, why not?).  It got me thinking and that got me writing.  Here's what I thought.

Right from the start the world is beautified by that simplistic aesthetic so typical of independent cinema.  The framing is mostly quite tight and the visual palette is consistently minimalist, leaving room for the audience to concentrate on the complex characters and themes of the film.  Perhaps the visual aspect of the film was necessarily rendered minimalist due to budget constraints, or maybe as an effort to unashamedly embrace the indie ‘look’ – either way it looks great and, more importantly, allows for a sense of clarity which is a perfect atmosphere in which to propagate some of the big ideas that the film explores.  And the film discusses one of the biggest issues: love.  It does so modestly, almost unintentionally, though, concentrating more on character development than making any grand philosophical statements.

The film achieves so much through the undeniable human charm of its four central characters.  Philip Seymour Hoffman is the incredibly enigmatic protagonist, Jack.  He’s quiet, socially-awkward and lacks common sense but is occasionally profound and deeply emotional.  Clyde (John Oritz) is his friend, work mate and mentor.  Clyde and his long term girlfriend Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) are trying to set Jack up with Lucy’s colleague Connie (Amy Ryan).

Clyde’s own relationship is falling apart, however.  The cracks are beginning to show under the strains of previous affairs and Clyde soldiers on, insisting that it’s just one of the natural burdens of being in a long-term relationship.  Clyde tries to teach Jack about love as he struggles with his own jealousy and insecurity and Lucy struggles with her lust and infidelity.  Ironically, it turns out Jack is the one with the best approach to love and life: untainted simplicity and an enduring optimism (or “good vibe” as Jack would say quietly growing his dreadlocks as he listens to reggae on his Walkman).  The last shot of the film effectively sums up Clyde’s realisation of this irony as he stands jaded and alone, watching Jack and Connie walk off in the simple happiness of each other’s company.  There are several of these poignant moments in the film that are loaded with dramatic meaning and subtext even though the scene is almost void of any dialogue – reminding the audience that the story was originally conceived for the stage by writer Robert Glaudini.

One of the most interesting and prevalent themes in the film is perception.  It discusses the way we see things and the way things actually are.  Again, the choice of characters is absolutely astounding as it allows for a well-illustrated exploration of this theme.  The film makes a stark contrast between Jack and Connie’s simple optimism (not naïve ignorance) and Clyde and Lucy’s defeatist, cynical realism/pessimism.  The film favours Jack’s integrity in his slow and wary but ultimately positive outlook compared to Clyde’s self-deprecating acceptance of a sub-standard relationship.  This theme of perception is manifested as a visual metaphor throughout the film: Clyde tells Jack to picture success in his head in order to achieve it when he’s teaching him to swim.  Jack starts to use this visualization technique in other enterprises (learning to cook for Connie, for example), but Clyde fails to heed his own advice, constantly swimming against the current of his own denial.  The use of this visual metaphor is a nice touch by first time director Hoffman: it isn’t overstated and nicely concretes the idea of perception within the viewer’s mind.

In criticism, the film verges on the side of cliché fairly often.  There are some overly contrived lines, most notably when Jack’s evening with Connie doesn’t go to plan, he smashes up the apartment, locks himself in the bathroom and Clyde reassures him: “we can get by this…everything is ruined but we can get by this.”  This one line pretty much sums up the whole point of the film: coming to terms with the tension between enduring dysfunctional relationships and fruitlessly chasing an unobtainable ideal.  I’d imagine that kind of melodramatic, on-the-nose dialogue would work perfectly in the theatre, but it doesn’t translate well onto film.  Some things are better left unsaid.

When Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal started playing it occurred to me that the producers were trying very hard to stick to textbook indie style (which isn’t really surprising considering it’s the same guys who made Little Miss Sunshine and The Savages).  The soundtrack seemed to be doing little more than borrowing a sense of style rather than adding significant meaning and, at times, the music was either redundant or jarring.

Amy Ryan’s is one of the weaker performances in the film, in my opinion, making Connie no more than a female counterpart of the lead at times and cartoonish at others.  I think the character is good though - perhaps Ryan would’ve done her justice if the producers had focussed more of the film’s attention on Connie.

The film takes a look at the nature of love in modern relationships by comparing its starkly contrasted characters and their perception of love.  There are a couple of moments in the film that verge uncomfortably close to the cliché and contrived, but not enough to detract from the overall value of the film.  The film contains some truth and insights that will resonate amongst many of the audience members.

Overall, a well-crafted and relatable film that allows audiences to invest in its superb characters and reflect on its meanings.  At 89 minutes it’s easy to digest and easy to enjoy.  It’s a visually pleasing piece of textbook independent cinema that Philip Seymour Hoffman should be proud to call his directorial debut.

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