Take Shelter

The family “LaForche” live in a remote Ohio backwater where mother “Samantha” (Jessica Chastain) looks after their deaf daughter “Hannah” (Tova Stewart) whilst dad “Curtis” (Michael Shannon) works for a local drilling outfit. Recently, though, things have become a bit strained as he has been having fairly graphic and disturbing nightmares. These foretell of the mother of all storms sweeping all before it before something ever more ghastly occurs. As these dreams intensify, he begins to struggle determining what is real and what isn’t. Are these hallucinations or is he perhaps seeing an unwelcome future? Initially, both he and “Samantha” think this could be stress-related and so he seeks medical advice that merely results in him becoming medicated. When that doesn’t help and when he starts to take elaborate precautions to protect his family from this impending disaster, we too start to struggle to establish what is going on in his conflicted and frustrated mind. Shannon is on good form here offering an evocative portrayal of a man suffering from mental illness. His erratic behaviour stuns his family and his neighbours, and the reaction from their tightly-knit Christian community is one more of sympathetic self-preservation than anything more useful as the family begin to buckle. Chastain also delivers strongly here as her character has great difficulty is adapting to the irrationalities of her husband’s behaviour whilst dealing with the challenges brought by their equally bemused child. It’s quite a salutary lesson in the toxiticy of anxiety and it’s effects on not just the person who is sick, but on those intimates who must deal with the behavioural inconsistencies emanating from one they love who cannot control their actions. There is also a palpable sense of desperation on display here, and that’s at times really quite intense whilst all the time we are never quite sure just what might be happening with those storm clouds overhead. That ambiguity also works quite well presenting us with a thoughtful and provocative drama that’s a tough watch at times, but worth it.