Take Shelter: Film Review

Editors note: This review was launched on Jan. 25, 2010.Related Subjects•Cannes Film Festival Revi... PARK CITY -- Along with his sad-eyed intensity together with a towering physicality much like individuals of Frankenstein's monster, there's possibly ignore enchanting American actor used in any medium today than Michael Shannon. His talents are offer exceptional used in author-director Rob Nichols' devastating Take Shelter. Clicked on up pre-Sundance through the new the new sony Pictures Classics, this knockout prestige picture can be a truly controlled good article on every level -- in the precise modulation of mood to its piercing emotional precision, its impeccable craftsmanship and breathtaking imagery. Rarely have electrical storms, cloud formations and glowering skies had this type of unnerving impact or expressed such dark visual poetry. While it sometimes conjures suggestions of vintage Polanski-style paranoia in rural America, this haunting mental thriller is yet another quasi-horror movie firmly rooted in slice-of-existence reality. An allegory for your troubles around the world bearing lower on anyone else at any given time of natural, industrial and economic cataclysms, it taps into pervasive anxiety more really than any film since Todd Haynes' Safe. Within the second collaboration with Shannon following Shotgun Tales, Nichols has written employment personalized for the actor's particular gifts in Curtis LaForche. From cinematographer Adam Stone's first arresting widescreen take a look at Curtis standing outdoors his small-town Ohio home, searching for within an ominous sky as clouds burst and oily rain falls, it's apparent this person has disturbing applying for grants his mind. He's a loving home existence with wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and 6-year-old daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), which has lost her hearing but is scheduled for corrective surgery. More youthful crowd has employment as crew manager for just about any drilling company, working alongside his buddy Dewart (Shea Whigham). Without belaboring the reason, however, Nichols reminds us that stability nowadays dangles around the tenuous thread. Dreams and hallucinations portending violence progressively plague Curtis, many of them potentially real. From flocks of untamed wild birds like moving ink stains overhead, to walls of thundering clouds closing in on him, to levitating furniture which comes crashes lower, these frightening visions are carried out with stunning effectiveness by an ace visual effects team introduced by Chris Wells. Keeping his inner turmoil to themselves but departing his wife and friend to interpret his progressively irrational and obsessive behavior, Curtis tries sedative drugs and counseling. Throughout vacation to his mother (Kathy Baker) we uncover her good status for paranoid schizophrenia, which then causes Curtis to suspect that could be where he's headed too. Unable to vanquish his fears, he takes a harmful loan and unlawfully borrows equipment from work to develop the house's tornado shelter when planning for your apocalypse. While Nichols doesn't stint on effective dramatic moments, he shows equal command of intimate findings -- the tenderness between mother and daughter the frazzled affections of marriage the relaxed camaraderie between co-employees the stiffness between siblings and siblings when Curtis' concerned brother (Ray McKinnon) assessments in on him. In Shannon's single scene with Baker, their careful channels of communication provide a window into years of painful distance. Chastain is heartbreaking just like a lady wondering once the person she loves has become someone else, her face dissolving into remains as Curtis finally describes his fears. But every performance is from the piece getting a movie that never wavers within the certainty of tone, its moments of dread and jolts of terror all enhanced by David Wingo's brooding score with a muscular soundscape. It's difficult to imagine another actor getting such unblinking conviction for the demanding lead role. One of many gifted stage stars to depart Chicago, Shannon's profile has elevated recently by getting an Oscar nomination for Revolutionary Road together with a prominent role on Boardwalk Empire. His portrayal grips as being a vice while he changes from soft qualities to menace, stillness to worry, incomprehension to crazed, purposeful illumination. When Curtis explodes and starts prophesying disaster with a community hall full of residents, it's among the film's most heated moments but furthermore its saddest, carried out within the scared, bewildered faces of individuals present. The unsettling final scene can be obtained to interpretation. Nevertheless it's apparent that Nichols is less interested in the last word on Curtis' sanity than he's in offerring how fear has become an inevitable a world, and the way family can endure, even if faced with disaster. Venue: Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Dramatic Competition (The brand new the new sony Pictures Classics) Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker, Tova Stewart, Ray McKinnon, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Robert Longstreet Director-film author: Rob NicholsProduction: Grove Hill Productions, Strange Matter Films for Hydraulx Entertainment, REI Capital Producers: Tyler Davidson, Sophia Lin Executive producers: Sarah Eco-friendly, John Kavanaugh-Manley, Colin Strause, Greg Strause, Richard Rothfeld, Chris Perot, Christos Konstantakopoulos Director of photography: Adam Stone Production designer: Chad Keith Music: David Wingo Costume designer: Karen Malecki Editor: Parke Gregg Visual effects supervisor: Chris Wells No rating, 2 hrs Festival p Cannes Sundance Film Festival Jessica Chastain Michael Shannon Sundance 2011 Cannes 2011 Take Shelter Sundance Film Festival Reviews Cannes Film Festival Reviews