Take Shelter

This is a wonderful low key film.  Michael Shannon is Curtis who's just an average Joe.  He works hard and loves his family.  Mostly things are good, he has trouble dealing with his young daughter's disability of being deaf but he tries.  Really, that's the heart of his character he loves his family and he tries his best.  Things become complicated though when he starts having visions of something like an apocalyptic storm coming.  He begins cleaning out the old storm shelter on his property.  The trouble is, he knows that his mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.  These visions could be the symptoms of his own mental troubles, or they are real.  How can you tell for sure?  Are you willing to bet your family?  These are the questions that torture him.

This film, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is an intense but quiet film.  It has the feeling of one of those dreams you get just before you wake where everything is sort of woven together but sort of still like things were frozen for a brief moment.  The music is wonderfully evocative and the acting is good and direct.  Certainly one of the better films I have seen.