I’m finally mostly over the flu! Yay! Ugh, this one has been just awful. I’m still tired and probably could have used another day or two off to just sleep and recover. I’ve certainly been sicker but my level of exhaustion is the worst. It’s made it so hard to function and think coherently at all. Even this morning I still had a moment where I stood stupidly in front of the refrigerator, staring at it for a good minute or two, trying to remember why I was standing there. I finally realized that I had come over to get my lunch. Which I had already gotten. And was already sitting behind me on the counter just waiting to be put in my lunch bag. Oy.

It’s been fun.

In sad news, Nagisa Oshima died. He was 80 and had suffered a stroke some time back so I guess these things happen. Still, sad.

I remember watching his film Cruel Story of Youth in a Japanese cinema class I took in college. I loved the film and the story but what I found most striking was the use of sound. The jarring juxtapositions, a lack of synchronicity, constantly keeping the viewer off balance. He had this fascinating theory of filmmaking with an absence of style, a director staying active in his film and denying the commodification of his work and his self through self-negation. Cruel Story of Youth is one of his earlier films and he went on to have a significant career, committed to his ideas of radical filmmaking. Y’all should check him out.

And I’ll stop with all the academic film school talk now. Sorry. That happens sometimes.

Take Shelter!

Whoa, Take Shelter.

take shelter

This was another one of those movies I missed when it played out here in LA. And now I am so sad that I did because I suspect it looked amazing in a theater. There are these epic shots of lightning but even the simple shots of farmland and blue skies are worthy of the big screen.

The story follows blue collar Curtis, a stellar performance by Michael Shannon that alone makes this film worth seeing. He’s having these bad dreams, nightmares really, about a storm that’s coming. Possibly about the end of the world. He’s trying to balance these dreams with his life, the job where his performance is slowly slipping, the home with the tight budget and special needs child. He has a family that loves him, good friends that are there to help, but in light of these dreams all he can focus on is the storm shelter in the backyard.

I don’t know if I can adequately describe the feelings this film evokes. The tension, the slow build of dread, the quiet creepiness of Curtis’s dreams. The fear that he’s descending into mental illness. The bigger fear that he’s not.

There’s such a play of energy and tension. The concerns of his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and best friend (Shea Whigham), his efforts to seek help, his worry that he is becoming like his mother who has been mentally ill since her mid-thrities, the age Curtis has recently reached himself. It all builds and swirls and, well, explodes like a storm. When Samantha begs Curtis to take the family to a community dinner because she just wants to do something normal, events lead Curtis to finally release the fear he’s been holding within. It’s a moment that gave me chills.

But that’s not the end and I won’t talk about the end because I just don’t want to spoil things for you. Is Curtis crazy? Or is the storm really coming? I’ll let you watch and find out for yourself.

The movie works so well I think because it is not just a tale about a coming apocalypse, it’s about what life in much of America has been the last five years. The precariousness, the financial uncertainty, how close we feel to going over an edge, how easily things can just fall apart.

The world doesn’t have to be ending for us to feel like it’s about to.

Take Shelter. Definitely a good one. Available on Blu-ray
, On Demand, and iTunes.