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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