There are an infinite number of ways for devastation to strike. We are bombarded with the ideas and images of them from all angles—books, movies, television and print news—and it becomes difficult to discern what is true and what is made up in others' imaginations. The line between the two is so often unclear. When the question of what is real and what is imagined becomes blurred in one single mind, then that person and those around him begin to question his sanity.
In Take Shelter, Michael Shannon plays a young family man, Curtis, who questions the visions of devastation that plague his nights. He dreams of a catastrophic and toxic storm that provokes insidious behavior in people and animals. Behind his small Ohio ranch house, he begins to build out and heavily fortify the tiny underground storm shelter. His wife, played by Jessica Chastain, is increasingly distressed as his erratic actions and speech intensify. His hearing-impaired daughter needs a costly operation that they cannot afford without his health insurance from his manual labor job, but his continued employment is questionable. The tenuous hold he has on reality seems to be slipping. And he and his wife are aware that Curtis's mother was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia when she was his present age. Curtis cannot determine if what he is dreaming of is from true premonition or psychosis.
Director Jeff Nichols has made a quietly terrifying film. The story moves slowly, building tension as Curtis vacillates between his belief in and his suspicion of the terrifying visions' accuracy. And Shannon's performance is mesmerizing in its sincerity as he is assaulted with the growing realization that an apocalyptic storm or a severe mental illness have the same devastating ability to tear his family a part.
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