I posted this review here in March, 2012. Just watched another Jessica Chastain film tonight ("Memory"), which led me to recalling Take Shelter, came here and discovered my review has disappeared. But i'd kept a copy, so once more with feeling ... and with many spoilers:
This powerful film is about many profound aspects of relationship to self and others -- and ramps up the stakes and odds by seeing it all through the lens of schizophrenia, a state of being which casts an inordinate constant shadow of doubt, distrust, and suspicion on both -- oneself and others. So the film is also about trust and communication. And it's about the power of secrets, the insidious power of secrets -- and, boy, is schizophrenia a "perfect" lens for examining the role and power of secrets cuz the diagnosis means being at the fulcrum -- the schizophrenic has hyper-attuned antenna for "secrets" in the world around him. And, in this case at least, Curtis (positioned in the film to be probably schizophrenic but also potentially psychic) is mightily propelled to simultaneously keep his own brain's mysteries a secret from even the most intimate others in his or her life.
So, to my mind this film pivots on turning points that have to do with secrets - and Curtis's relationship to them. And this bears entirely on my interpretation of the final scene - and convinces me that it is a dream.
When, for the first time in the story, Curtis opts to let go of his secrets from Samantha - fully let go - which means not only revealing his hidden truth to her but also letting her be his partner and witness at the shrink's (rather than seeking counseling alone, in secret) -- he makes a life-altering step toward releasing the power of secrets over his being. No less significant than the more explicitly framed life-altering step -- toward trust -- which was the step he took in unlocking the storm shelter door.
And after the shrink's, the remainder of the film is, imo, Curtis's dream of connecting -- feeling on the "same page" -- and another significant step toward healing: In the dream, he's no longer alone in his suffering and hallucinations. He dreams the entire beach scene. Imo, they didn't actually go to the beach - they had turned their budget for the beach over to paying shrink bills. Instead, what the film ends with is him having a powerful and healing dream: Unlike all his previous hallucinations, this one is a dream, not a nightmare, for the key reason that for the first time he wasn't alienated and alone and dealing in secret with his visualized demons.
In his dream -- because he has let his wife "in" by including her even in his shrink sessions -- he is now able to see them as allies, loved ones seeing the same world he sees. He is no longer panicked -- or as panicked -- by the approaching storm he sees, he remains transfixed with a look of mystification and beholding in his face -- largely because in this dream, he is not the only one, not even the first one to see the storm, his daughter is. Though he does grab up his daughter, there is a newfound degree of calm to his fear of what lies on the horizon precisely because his family shares his perception and fear.
Samantha even feels and examines the same motor-oil downpour (an inclusion that, imho, tips the scale of the director's intention even if he disclaims any preferred reading - raining motor oil cannot happen in a "real" storm). Imo, the reason it happens here is to indicate, metaphorically, that husband and wife are now - at last - in his own view of his world and his marriage -- back on the same page of shared perception, symbolized visually for him in his dream by casting his wife and daughter as seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels.
And so the dream is both effect and cause - it comes about as the effect of his having let Samantha into full partnership in his struggle -- and as "cause" (or trigger of further healing beyond the end of the film) because the dream is the first time his hallucinations don't include feeling alone and alienated from his loved ones in the maelstrom of his perceptions of the world. The storm itself has always been metaphoric for the chaos and potential for life to be threatening and terrifying, but now he's found a vital life truth, that (you could say, to borrow a political phrase) "it's the secrecy, stupid" that is the real "killer" in life with oneself and others, not the vision/hallucination that terrifies. To borrow from politics again, FDR this time, you could also say he learns, or starts to learn, that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
(Meanwhile, a side note of sorts: At the moment the three of them entered the storm shelter, I recalled something a Brazilian author once wrote, "The schizophrenics are the antenna of the human race." In the context of this film's story, I initially applied that in a literal way - that perhaps it was going to turn out he was indeed psychic. And that is how I initially interpreted the final scene as well. But within minutes -- and something I additionally loved about the film -- its reverberations after the "final curtain" led me to realize that instead I see him metaphorically having been the "antenna" that he chose to act on ultimately in a way that led him back to his family rather than away from them.)
This powerful film is about many profound aspects of relationship to self and others -- and ramps up the stakes and odds by seeing it all through the lens of schizophrenia, a state of being which casts an inordinate constant shadow of doubt, distrust, and suspicion on both -- oneself and others. So the film is also about trust and communication. And it's about the power of secrets, the insidious power of secrets -- and, boy, is schizophrenia a "perfect" lens for examining the role and power of secrets cuz the diagnosis means being at the fulcrum -- the schizophrenic has hyper-attuned antenna for "secrets" in the world around him. And, in this case at least, Curtis (positioned in the film to be probably schizophrenic but also potentially psychic) is mightily propelled to simultaneously keep his own brain's mysteries a secret from even the most intimate others in his or her life.
So, to my mind this film pivots on turning points that have to do with secrets - and Curtis's relationship to them. And this bears entirely on my interpretation of the final scene - and convinces me that it is a dream.
When, for the first time in the story, Curtis opts to let go of his secrets from Samantha - fully let go - which means not only revealing his hidden truth to her but also letting her be his partner and witness at the shrink's (rather than seeking counseling alone, in secret) -- he makes a life-altering step toward releasing the power of secrets over his being. No less significant than the more explicitly framed life-altering step -- toward trust -- which was the step he took in unlocking the storm shelter door.
And after the shrink's, the remainder of the film is, imo, Curtis's dream of connecting -- feeling on the "same page" -- and another significant step toward healing: In the dream, he's no longer alone in his suffering and hallucinations. He dreams the entire beach scene. Imo, they didn't actually go to the beach - they had turned their budget for the beach over to paying shrink bills. Instead, what the film ends with is him having a powerful and healing dream: Unlike all his previous hallucinations, this one is a dream, not a nightmare, for the key reason that for the first time he wasn't alienated and alone and dealing in secret with his visualized demons.
In his dream -- because he has let his wife "in" by including her even in his shrink sessions -- he is now able to see them as allies, loved ones seeing the same world he sees. He is no longer panicked -- or as panicked -- by the approaching storm he sees, he remains transfixed with a look of mystification and beholding in his face -- largely because in this dream, he is not the only one, not even the first one to see the storm, his daughter is. Though he does grab up his daughter, there is a newfound degree of calm to his fear of what lies on the horizon precisely because his family shares his perception and fear.
Samantha even feels and examines the same motor-oil downpour (an inclusion that, imho, tips the scale of the director's intention even if he disclaims any preferred reading - raining motor oil cannot happen in a "real" storm). Imo, the reason it happens here is to indicate, metaphorically, that husband and wife are now - at last - in his own view of his world and his marriage -- back on the same page of shared perception, symbolized visually for him in his dream by casting his wife and daughter as seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels.
And so the dream is both effect and cause - it comes about as the effect of his having let Samantha into full partnership in his struggle -- and as "cause" (or trigger of further healing beyond the end of the film) because the dream is the first time his hallucinations don't include feeling alone and alienated from his loved ones in the maelstrom of his perceptions of the world. The storm itself has always been metaphoric for the chaos and potential for life to be threatening and terrifying, but now he's found a vital life truth, that (you could say, to borrow a political phrase) "it's the secrecy, stupid" that is the real "killer" in life with oneself and others, not the vision/hallucination that terrifies. To borrow from politics again, FDR this time, you could also say he learns, or starts to learn, that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
(Meanwhile, a side note of sorts: At the moment the three of them entered the storm shelter, I recalled something a Brazilian author once wrote, "The schizophrenics are the antenna of the human race." In the context of this film's story, I initially applied that in a literal way - that perhaps it was going to turn out he was indeed psychic. And that is how I initially interpreted the final scene as well. But within minutes -- and something I additionally loved about the film -- its reverberations after the "final curtain" led me to realize that instead I see him metaphorically having been the "antenna" that he chose to act on ultimately in a way that led him back to his family rather than away from them.)
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