Jeff Nichols has created an enthralling and surreal drama as
we follow Michael Shannon’s drill operator and family man who begins to
experience lucid dreams of an incoming storm. As his visions grow more
disturbing with rabid dogs, a car crash and zero gravity furniture he becomes
more distant from his wife and everyone around him. It is a film about the
unpredictable and the innate safety of contemporary society and general
assumption that the unexpected does not ever happen. The film shares many
qualities with Nichol’s debut feature, Shotgun Stories, in that it revolves
around family turmoil in a rural town with bouts of violence and also starred
Michael Shannon.
A major theme is the breakdown of communication as Michael
Shannon increasingly becomes more closed off, interacting less and less with
his wife who already does not have many people she can talk to as she balances
with her deaf daughter. As her husband becomes more erratic every time she leaves
the house to attend a morning yard sale; digging up a large hole in the back
garden to place a large shipping container inside and constructing a dog house
with barbed wire for their house trained dog.
The journey of Shannon’s Curtis as he becomes more
emotionally and mentally detached from his wife and his fellow workers is
executed with subtlety as he becomes more irrational; which is credit to
Nichol’s superb script as his behaviour. While some will find it slow moving, I
found the pace to be even with Curtis’ isolation from his wife even though his
intentions are noble and he has a family history of mental disorder. We are
guided through his slow decline as the people around him begin to take notice
of his detachment; such as his boss, his brother Kyle, his work friend, Dewart
and his wife who he shuts out the most.
Jessica Chastain’s Samantha,
Curtis’ wife, is the second most important role in the film. As we follow
Curtis through his visually arresting nightmares, we watch how Samantha is
forced to come to terms with her husbands’ strange behaviour; and we are left
feeling sympathy for both Curtis and Samantha. A strong motif is the strength
of the household and importance of family. The loyalty and patience of Samantha
are tested as Curtis changes their priorities and spends their savings in
preparation for a supposedly apocalyptic event in which no one is safe.
A strong dramatic piece, which includes a brilliant
monologue scene at a company dinner, Shannon’s family man begins to crack up
under the hallucinations of an inbound cloud of tornados or maybe just an
inevitable, genetically related mental breakdown; his mother is living in a
home after her own breakdown around Curtis’s age. The effects are stunning and a stark contrast
to the summery, bustling tree lined driveways of a small Ohio town. Shots of a swarm of swirling birds, clusters
of lighting arterially scorching a black sky and the looming storm cloud itself
are all very biblical and grand imagery in this fatalistic tale.
It soon becomes difficult to discern what is actually happening
and what Curtis is envisioning. However you begin to wonder as the film goes on
whether Curtis’ prediction is correct. It is a thrilling narrative device as we
wonder whether it is the onset of a mental illness or really a Nostradamus-esque
gift that will result in a devastating mega storm. Secretly wishing it’s the
latter for the climax and so Curtis can finally prove everyone wrong; the film
will keep you guessing until the very end though.
This is worth watching for Michael Shannon’s captivating
performance but has also revealed a promising talent in writer- director Jeff
Nichols for his stunning, supernatural storytelling as well as keeping the film
away from the melodrama that it could quite easily become. It is the gradual breakdown as Curtis goes
behind his wife and his over pre-caution rather than any overt display that
makes this a brilliant character study. It is also this subtle character arc
that keeps the tension and mystery of the film going with a question; is he
suffering a mental breakdown or is there really going to be a storm?
****
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