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bironicAnother excellent film: Take Shelter (2011). This is the NY Times review that made me want to see it. A man living in tornado alley starts having nightmares and waking hallucinations of apocalyptic storms, and the question is whether he's slipping into paranoid schizophrenia like his mother did at his age or whether something extraordinary—"something not right," as he puts it in a particularly discomfiting moment—truly is coming.
Only it's better than that, because he recognizes and fears the possible signs of mental illness and takes steps to diagnose and treat it (even while keeping it from his family as long as possible because of his fear and embarrassment), and soon enough he says, Look, whatever it is, I just need to know how to deal with what it's doing to me; because, as the article said, while the characters and the film struggle between the physical and the metaphysical they're also portraying an era-appropriate metaphor for American economic anxieties (there are explicit references to variable interest loans and credit card debt), and when you think about it that way Curtis' drive to protect his family can seem reasonable; because it's well-acted and beautifully shot; and because it's genuinely creepy. You know you're building to a terrible climax, but you don't know what form it will take: Curtis' mind cracking until he has to be institutionalized, him doing harm to himself or his family, a truly apocalyptic storm striking, a symbolic catastrophe happening like something going wrong with his young daughter's forthcoming surgery, the family going bankrupt and his wife leaving him in a self-fulfilling prophecy... It's scary. It's scary that your own mind can frighten you, and it's scary that a pending, unpredictable storm is going to take away everything that keeps you safe and happy; it's scary when you can't tell which is true.
You can see that some symptoms fit but others don't. You can see some of the signs of how the paranoia and panic attacks began, like the untold recent event that resulted in his daughter's deafness, the TV news stories about disasters, money being tight, living in open sky country with supercells looming on any afternoon. (The whole time I wanted to shout, Don't live there! It's bad for your stress levels! But then when the family talked about vacationing on the beach, I was like, It's not like storms don't happen on the oceanfront either! There's no winning—nowhere you can go to feel truly safe from disaster once you've got fear in you. Which I suppose was the point.) I'm not sure how I feel about the ending—there were some other possible endings that might have worked better—but it could have been worse.
If I had to compare it to any other movie, I'd say Donnie Darko. The trailer certainly made it look quite similar, with the hallucinatory thunderclaps and strange patterns of flying crows, Curtis staring at himself in the mirror as he takes his prescription pills. But it's not as twisted as Donnie Darko. I could compare it to Black Swan, but Take Shelter handles itself so much more subtly. Highly recommended.
…Lots of movies lately. A Dangerous Method: disappointing. Scarface: also disappointing. Flash Gordon (the Dino di Laurentiis version): camp fantastic. I did mention I've had a brief cold and there's not much to do outside of work until the weekend when people start getting back from spring breaks, right?
Only it's better than that, because he recognizes and fears the possible signs of mental illness and takes steps to diagnose and treat it (even while keeping it from his family as long as possible because of his fear and embarrassment), and soon enough he says, Look, whatever it is, I just need to know how to deal with what it's doing to me; because, as the article said, while the characters and the film struggle between the physical and the metaphysical they're also portraying an era-appropriate metaphor for American economic anxieties (there are explicit references to variable interest loans and credit card debt), and when you think about it that way Curtis' drive to protect his family can seem reasonable; because it's well-acted and beautifully shot; and because it's genuinely creepy. You know you're building to a terrible climax, but you don't know what form it will take: Curtis' mind cracking until he has to be institutionalized, him doing harm to himself or his family, a truly apocalyptic storm striking, a symbolic catastrophe happening like something going wrong with his young daughter's forthcoming surgery, the family going bankrupt and his wife leaving him in a self-fulfilling prophecy... It's scary. It's scary that your own mind can frighten you, and it's scary that a pending, unpredictable storm is going to take away everything that keeps you safe and happy; it's scary when you can't tell which is true.
You can see that some symptoms fit but others don't. You can see some of the signs of how the paranoia and panic attacks began, like the untold recent event that resulted in his daughter's deafness, the TV news stories about disasters, money being tight, living in open sky country with supercells looming on any afternoon. (The whole time I wanted to shout, Don't live there! It's bad for your stress levels! But then when the family talked about vacationing on the beach, I was like, It's not like storms don't happen on the oceanfront either! There's no winning—nowhere you can go to feel truly safe from disaster once you've got fear in you. Which I suppose was the point.) I'm not sure how I feel about the ending—there were some other possible endings that might have worked better—but it could have been worse.
If I had to compare it to any other movie, I'd say Donnie Darko. The trailer certainly made it look quite similar, with the hallucinatory thunderclaps and strange patterns of flying crows, Curtis staring at himself in the mirror as he takes his prescription pills. But it's not as twisted as Donnie Darko. I could compare it to Black Swan, but Take Shelter handles itself so much more subtly. Highly recommended.
…Lots of movies lately. A Dangerous Method: disappointing. Scarface: also disappointing. Flash Gordon (the Dino di Laurentiis version): camp fantastic. I did mention I've had a brief cold and there's not much to do outside of work until the weekend when people start getting back from spring breaks, right?
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Date: Apr. 5th, 2012 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 5th, 2012 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 6th, 2012 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 8th, 2012 01:25 am (UTC)Did it totally creep you out for a while afterwards too? I had trouble falling asleep that night.
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Date: Apr. 8th, 2012 04:23 am (UTC)Yes! (It certainly didn't help that it was very windy the night I watched it, and the wind howled all night.)
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Date: Apr. 8th, 2012 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 28th, 2012 11:16 pm (UTC)I said "Jesus Christ!" at this scene. Out loud. There were so many simple shots in this film -- the storms, the starlings doing their crazy chaos-theory flight patterns, the stranger standing outside the window -- but they were just so immediate and real. Curtis's shame at his bed accident, the banker trying to warn him off the loan, the way he can't talk about what's happening to him, and you can see how much of an effort it is for him to open up. I was just blown away (no pun intended, considering the nature of the film).
One of the Starz channels was showing it -- the movie ended at 4:30 but it's still in my head.