Taglines: Anxiety is born out of having something to lose.
Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) lives in a small Ohio town with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and six–year-old daughter Hannah, who is deaf. Curtis makes a modest living as a crew chief for a sand mining company.
Samantha is a stay-at-home mother and part-time seamstress who suplements their income by selling handmade wares at the flea market each weekend. Money is tight, and navigating Hannah’s healthcare and special needs education is a constant struggle. Despite that, Curtis and Samantha are very much in love and their family is a happy one.
Then Curtis begins having terrifying dreams about an encroaching, apocalyptic storm. He chooses to keep the disturbance to himself, channeling his anxiety into the obsessive building of a storm shelter in their backyard. His seemingly inexplicable behavior concerns and confounds Samantha, and provokes intolerance among co-workers, friends and neighbors.
But the resulting strain on his marriage and tension within the community doesn’t compare to Curtis’s privately held fear of what his dreams may truly signify. Faced with the doomed proposition that his disturbing visions signal disaster of one kind or another, Curtis confides in Samantha, testing the power of their bond against the highest possible stakes.
Director’s Statement
When I began writing Take Shelter in the summer of 2008, I was in the middle of my first year of marriage. Although both my career and personal life were on a positive track, I had a nagging feeling that the world at large was heading for harder times. This free-floating anxiety was part economic, part just growing up, but it mainly came from the fact that I finally had things in my life that I didn’t want to lose. All of these feelings filtered directly into the characters of this film.
Take Shelter follows Curtis LaForche, a working class husband and father, as he deals with the panic that arises from a series of terrifying dreams. For Curtis, these dreams are either harbingers of a supernatural storm, or early symptoms of something he’s feared his entire life. Curtis’ strongest, most immediate reaction is to protect his family, his wife Samantha and their six-year-old daughter Hannah. The question for Curtis becomes, what is he protecting them from, the storm or himself?
I wrote Take Shelter because I believed there was a feeling out in the world that was palpable. It was an anxiety that was very real in my life, and I had the notion it was very real in the lives of other Americans as well as other people around the world. This film was a way for me to talk about that fear and that anxiety. I hope there is an answer to this feeling by the end of the film.
I believe there is, and it’s the reason that this wonderful group of people came together to help me make Take Shelter. — Jeff Nichols
Take Shelter
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Katy Mixon, Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Kathy Baker, Natasha Randall, Heather Caldwell
Screenplay by: Jeff Nichols
Production Design by: Chad Keith
Cinematography by; Adam Stone
Film Editing by: Parke Gregg
Costume Design by: Karen Malecki
Set Decoration by: Adam Willis
Art Direction by: Jennifer Klide
Music by: David Wingo
MPAA Rating: R for some language.
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: October 7, 2011
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