Audiovisual Library

Curtis LaForche lives in a small town in Ohio with his wife and his six-year-old deaf daughter. When Curtis begins to have terrifying nightmares about a storm coming, he obsessively builds a storm shelter in his backyard.  “What if everything that Curtis values were to be suddenly swept away?”, asks Scott (2011). This is not “about a life of luxury and ease, but about modest comforts and reasonable expectations: a decent job with health benefits and vacation time, a loving family, a house of your own” (Scott, 2011).

What Curtis’s dreams may truly signify is left to the audience. Are these hallucinations a sign of the schizophrenia that runs in his family, or metaphors for looming disaster (contemporary fears about economic /environmental/man-made disasters), or Curtis’s prophecy of an impending cosmic catastrophe? There’s no comfortable answer.

Take Shelter premiered in January 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival and won the 50th Critics’ Week Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. At its Sundance premiere, this is how te director described Take Shelter  : “It’s a snapshot of a feeling that’s out in the world right now. It’s a general sense of stress and anxiety and I think it’s palpable” (Howell, 2011).

References:
Howell, Peter. “Take Shelter: When dread takes hold”. www.toronto.com. 31 Oct 2011.

Scott, A.O. “A Splintering Psyche or Omens of Disaster?”. http://movies.nytimes.com. 29 Sept 2011.
 

Image: Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Vulcan Demirkan-Martin
Audiovisual Library