This film is billed as a psychological thriller ... but I don't quite agree
For me, it was partly a window into what it is like to endure the agony of mental illness. Insanity is usually something to be observed, with pity but little understanding.
In Take Shelter a young husband, father and drill operator -- Curtis LaForche, brilliantly played by Michael Shannon -- experiences terrifying nightmares. The son of a committed paranoid schizophrenic, he comes to the conclusion that he is mentally ill, yet is still driven by a mad, uncontrollable compulsion to build a shelter from an oncoming catastrophic storm. The confusion Curtis is enduring is portrayed so vividly that it is impossible not to share his pain.
His awful dreams always begin with a storm, heralded by thunder and forked lightning. The rain is greasy, like oil. Birds scream in strange patterns and clusters in the darkening sky. His beloved dog attacks him, so violently that the pain in his arm persists long after he wakes. There is a zombie, too, so horrifying that when he wakes he finds he has wet the bed.
His wife, played with tenderness by Jessica Chastain, loves and supports him, despite her growing fear. There is a small daughter, Hannah, deaf and beautiful, in need of constant supervision and protection, portrayed by a talented child who is actually deaf, Tova Stewart. While adored, she adds to the pressure on the little family.
The film is also a commentary on the state of health in the United States -- consulting a psychiatrist is too expensive, while the free counseling clinic has too few clinicians, men and women who are well motivated, but are shifted around to fill gaps in the ranks. Curtis is trapped in his job because of the good medical insurance involved, and when he is fired it means that Hannah does not get the cochlear implant she has been promised. Nor does he get the psychological help he needs.
There is loneliness, too. Christian inlaws are distant and unsympathetic. One friend and his one brother ask him if he is all right, but are helpless. When Curtis loses self-control and screams a warning to a dinner crowd that an epic storm is on the way and that it is imperative to find shelter, the reaction is silent, uncomprehending hostility. He is a good worker, but when he borrows a backhoe from his work site to dig out his own shelter, his boss refuses to try to understand the strange situation, and fires him, instead.
A tornado does come. The shelter he has built (at a cost he cannot possibly afford) does seem to serve its purpose. But when morning dawns the world is bright, calm and sunny, with very little evident damage. It was just a regular twister that has gone on its way. It is this that persuades him that he has indeed gone mad
But has he? The real message is, of course, about global warming. And the remarkable and unexpected ending makes the strong, final point -- that perhaps Curtis LaForche was not insane at all, just eerily prescient.