‘Take Shelter’ – Michael Shannon, the End Times and the Horrors of Mental Illness

Send a crazed, supernatural, unstoppable murderer my way and maybe I’ll escape them. Throw some ghosts or demons at me and hopefully a priest or one of those Paranormal TV show guys from the Travel Channel can help. Zombies or vampires? Sure, it’ll suck. But I know how to at least try and survive that. I have a fighting chance. These things are frightening but there are three things scarier than all of them: An unstoppable world ending weather event, losing my family, or losing my mind. Take Shelter deals with the entirety of this unholy triumvirate.

In the movie, Curtis (Michael Shannon) lives with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their deaf daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart) in the prettiest version of Ohio that I’ve ever seen. They live a simple life and love each other deeply. This is relayed in a single scene when writer/director Jeff Nichols has Curtis arrive home from work and his wife embraces him as they watch their daughter sleep from her doorway. He tells her “I still take my boots off every night because I’m afraid to wake her up.” “I still whisper” she responds.

This will all be put to the test as Curtis begins to have nightmares of a storm that rains motor oil and turns those around them into rage filled murderers. The dreams start to then blend into reality when one night he has a dream that his dog attacked him and it takes an entire day for his arm to stop hurting. Hallucinations start to set in during his waking hours and before you know it, Curtis is acting even more unhinged than a sweaty Kevin Bacon in Stir of Echoes when he’s chugging copious amounts of orange juice and digging up his lawn.

There’s a scary yet rational explanation for all of this; Curtis’ mother suffers from schizophrenia and there’s a good chance that’s what’s happening to him. However, he’s self-diagnosing using magazine quizzes, keeping it all to himself and trying to white knuckle his way through the situation. Even if he were to ask for help, it’s becoming increasingly clear the rural area he lives in isn’t equipped with the mental health professionals to deal with this sort of thing. And certainly not in a way that would be of any comfort to him. Not to mention he is already struggling with money as their daughter’s possible hearing-saving operation looms.

So many of these challenges are frightfully realistic when it comes to mental health, and we haven’t even gotten to the possibility of the visions being an actual prophetic warning of what’s to come.

Take Shelter is 120 minutes of beautiful cinematography and absolute anguish propped up by an acting masterpiece from Michael Shannon. His performance makes the character of Curtis feel as if he could be your next-door neighbor. He’s a good person not asking for a lot in life. He only wants to work, take care of his family, and occasionally have a few beers with his work buddies. The world doesn’t have an ounce of sympathy or respect for his simple wishes, however, as it puts so much more than that on his plate, all while cruelly removing the few things he really cares for.

Nichols manages to craft a script that has you really feeling the pain and hopelessness of losing one’s sanity. The salt in the wound? What it looks like to those around you. Those you love. Which is where the supporting cast of Chastain and best friend Dewart (Shea Whigham) shine alongside Shannon. As things culminate to a boiling point, Dewart attacks Curtis in front of the entire town and their families at a community dinner. After their short fist fight, something in Curtis finally snaps and Michael Shannon delivers a career-defining monologue to the audience; and one of the most awkward moments of all time to the townsfolk.

Curtis screams “THERE’S A STORM COMIN!” and pounds the tables with his fist, food flying everywhere. He is now officially, all the fuck in. There is no turning back and the quiet part is being said out loud. He has lost his job, his dog, his community, and his best friend. His marriage is hanging on by a thread after spending all of their money building a storm shelter, complete with all the items necessary for the three of them to survive an extended amount of time in together when the storm comes.

All this asks yet another question of us: What if this was happening to you and you really, really believed you were right? That you were being given a chance to save your family for whatever reason? What if you trust in the people around you who tell you that you need help? Knowing if you’re wrong, your wife and little girl would die because you didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary to save them. It’s heartbreaking because he just wants to do what’s right for his family and it’s become clear to us that he’s completely and utterly fucked whether that storm shows up or not.

The FX crew and sound editing team behind Take Shelter do a damn good job of making all this seem so believable. These aren’t CGI fueled, gaudy, end of times images he’s suffering from. The funnel clouds sprouting in the open Ohio country, the birds falling from above, motor oil rain and the cracking of the sky seem all too real. You can feel the power of the damage they bring with them even as you only see them at a distance. The FX work does so much with so little because much like the film’s story, they are capable of showing just how devastatingly horrific these small-scale events can be to the people forced to experience them. Both a powerful storm over a small town or beach front and the loss of the ability to control one’s own thoughts. You’re completely helpless to it and it is frightening.

Eventually a storm does come and the family dutifully goes to his storm shelter, even wearing the gas masks at his request. When the storm ends and he has to exit to shelter it’s a powerful moment of truth. Either he’s going to open that door to a world destroyed or to the fact that he has full blown schizophrenia. Director and writer J.J. Abrams used to talk a lot about his scripts having a “mystery box” within them that kept the audience wondering what was inside. Nichols uses the questions of what is real and what isn’t as his mystery box and just like director Bill Paxton and writer Brent Hanley did when they made Frailty, he smokes it all the way to the nub.

A mental health professional tells Curtis to take a vacation with his family and enjoy them before truly committing himself to a hospital and facing his sickness head on. There, with everything seemingly peaceful, a storm shows up over the ocean. His daughter motions to him that she sees it. His wife nods that she does too. Motor oil begins raining down and they hold each other as the film ends. We have no clear answer on what is happening here and it’s really up to the viewer to decide. Is Curtis just imagining all of this? Is it another dream? Or was he right all along?

It’s really up to the viewer to decide but the way I take it is that it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, a storm or a sickness. The difference is that they are all, for the first time, facing it together.

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