Take Shelter (2011)

[djross]

Throughout Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter (2011) the viewer remains unsure precisely what kind of movie they are watching. On the one hand, it seems clearly to be a sensitive and subtle character study and an exploration of both the psychology and sociology of mental illness. The virtues of the film in this regard are clear: the nuanced way in which numerous scenes reveal further information about the characters’ past lives, or about the complexity of their lives, is evidence of a screenwriter with both human understanding and a confidently sophisticated approach to their craft. On the other hand, viewers without prior knowledge of the film find themselves wondering throughout whether the movie is about to turn into a different kind of entity entirely, in which the forebodings of the protagonist turn out not just to indicate inner turmoil but to presage dramatic if not apocalyptic events in the world outside.

This deliberate tension between two possible generic pathways the movie could take remains unresolved up until the final scene. In fact, the conclusion of the film seems to be concocted to produce debate about how this tension is to be understood. Responses to the final scene thus inevitably turn on the question of how the ending should be understood, and specifically whether the final scene should be understood as “real” or as just another dream or delusion. In this sense, the construction of the film and of the final scene in particular closely resembles that of Inception, which also resulted in debate about whether the final scene indicated an escape from dreams back to reality, or on the contrary the impossibility of escaping the dreamscape. And in the case of Take Shelter, just as in the case of Inception, this debate inevitably largely misses the point.

Those who see the ending as another dream see the movie as essentially an exploration of the interior world of its protagonist, Curtis, and of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill in the harsh world of contemporary America, with its uncertain economy and absence of universal health care. Another group will dislike the ending precisely because it seems to detract from the psychological and sociological focus of the film, and abhor the fact that the ending seems to take the movie into more conventional and fantastic generic territory, however the final scene is understood. Finally, there will be those who feel it is clear that the final scene is filmed entirely differently to the previous dreams and hallucinations, and draw the conclusion that Curtis was right all along, was not crazy, and foresaw what others were unable to perceive. They will thus argue that, however well-done a portrait of mental illness the film may present, in the end this is not the true theme of the movie at all, as Curtis does not in fact suffer from mental illness, and that on the contrary the movie is about the horror of being the only one who perceives the looming danger (a common theme in horror movies).

Why do such responses and debates miss the point? In the case of Inception, it is because the question of whether the final scene is dream or reality is less important than the fact that the audience is watching a movie, a movie that is in a sense both dream and reality. In fact, one important way in which Inception can be understood is as a metaphor for the film production process, and the questions it raises are: firstly, about how to understand cinema as a form of collective dreaming; and, secondly, to ask to what extent the fact that films are manufactured dreams means they are a gift and to what extent it means they are a poison (this is Plato’s question about the status of writing, technologically updated).

In the case of Take Shelter, the film is less directly a metaphor for cinema itself, and thus less concerned about the question of whether movies are a gift or a poison. Nevertheless, with its constant tension between two kinds of movies, Take Shelter is concerned with its own cinematic status, and with the fact that the audience is engaged in a collective experience of (real, that is, material) dreaming. Take Shelter diagnoses the contemporary state of collective dreaming (and perhaps specifically of American dreaming, but if there is something peculiarly American here, then this is probably an Americanness in which we all share to a greater or lesser extent), and of the fact that our collective dreams are filled with anxiety and foreboding.

The question Take Shelter asks, therefore, is firstly whether this state of anxiety and foreboding can be reduced to merely a form of collective psychopathology (hence, a psycho-social pathology), unrelated to the true nature of reality. Is it simply that these anxieties and forebodings are in fact engendered through a technological inception process, that is, manufactured by the media? But, secondly, if this is not wholly the case, if there is more to our anxiety and foreboding than simply media sensationalism, then might it be that only somebody who is somehow outside the general milieu, someone whose perception (whose dreams) are mistaken by others as unreal, can truly read the signs, even if only partially and thus perhaps only in a half-deluded manner? Could it be that only someone who is both inside and outside the milieu will be able to interpret this anxiety and this foreboding, and recognise from out of this interpretation what it means for the future of human or American society, and thus be potentially capable of a critique of that society? That Take Shelter genuinely poses these questions, and poses them to us, the audience of cinemagoers, as protagonists within a collective dream, but potentially as interpreters of that dream, and hence as potentially capable of transforming the dream, that is, the reality — this is what makes it such an interesting movie.

[Suture Self]

Lovely review, just read it all. I had a very similar reaction to the film. It might have even struck a stronger chord within me because I'm an American, and these feelings of anxiety towards the future are ever-present, regardless of political party. Is Australia's political/social/economic climate similar?

I also read that Jeff Nichols made this movie while in the early beginnings of raising his first child, so much of it, as I saw it, even before reading that interview, was about the anxieties of starting a family, or of bringing life into this unstable world of ours. Did you get that impression as well?

[djross]

Lovely review, just read it all.

Thanks. It was my first longer review on this website (have since added one more, on The Siege, here).

It might have even struck a stronger chord within me because I'm an American, and these feelings of anxiety towards the future are ever-present, regardless of political party. Is Australia's political/social/economic climate similar?

Australia has thus far been fortunate in mostly avoiding feeling the effects of the global financial crisis. But it has been observed for a long time that there is a mismatch between the relative health of the Australian economy and the anxiety about the economy that is revealed in surveys of opinion.

I also read that Jeff Nichols made this movie while in the early beginnings of raising his first child, so much of it, as I saw it, even before reading that interview, was about the anxieties of starting a family, or of bringing life into this unstable world of ours. Did you get that impression as well?

Yes. But not as strongly as from Eraserhead.