TAKE SHELTER - MIFF 2011

Let me just get something out in the open, I am in love with Jessica Chastain.  After “The Tree Of Life” and now this, I can safely say that I am mesmerized whenever this stunning actress is on screen.  Now that that is out of the way, let’s talk about “Take Shelter”.  This is a truly fantastic film that looks at mental illness and the effects it has on a family when one of them is dealing with it.

The film is about Curtis (Michael Shannon), a working man with a young family: his wife Samantha and their four year old deaf daughter Hannah.  Curtis has just started suffering very vivid nightmares that always seem to begin with a wild and violent storm.  The dreams continue to get more potent and after waking up one morning with his bed-sheets covered in urine, Curtis begins to seriously worry.  His mother was diagnosed as a schizophrenic in her thirties and was forced to leave her family to be looked after properly.  He has always sworn that he would never leave his own family, no matter what, but it gets harder and harder as the madness continues to take hold of him.

Curtis starts to believe that his nightmares are actually a prophecy of some kind and starts to go about fixing up and extending their tornado shelter.  This causes amazing tension between him and his wife, because he does all of this without her consent and by borrowing more money on their mortgage, which is money they just cannot spare.  Curtis is self-destructing and looks like he may end up breaking his promise, but is he able to stop his descent into madness and still be with his family?

This is an amazingly visual film and is just stunningly directed.  The expert craftsmanship on display is just awesome.  Especially fantastic are the dream sequences that Curtis has which are incredibly inventive (especially the zero gravity one) and quite scary.  When they begin you are never actually sure if what you are witnessing is reality or not.

As great as the visual element is in this film, it is the emotional beats it hits that make “Take Shelter” an absolute standout.  Imagine how scary it must be to think you may be going mad, knowing that there is history of it in your family.  Knowing also that you have no power over it and that you are unable to stop it would be terrifying.  There are a couple of brilliant and heartbreaking moments between Curtis and his wife that are the core of this film.  One is after Samantha initially finds Curtis making the shelter, another is at a party with his friends after Curtis has had a breakdown and finally there is another moment near the end.  All these moments show exactly what true love is all about as well as what it means to be a family.

All of the above scenes, and the film as a whole, are expertly acted and full of powerful emotions.  Michael Shannon plays Cutis and is usually an actor I react against.  I’m not sure why but he has an ability to just rub me the wrong way, but he is outstanding here in “Take Shelter”.  I’ve already mentioned Jessica Chastain who plays Samantha, Cutis’s wife, and again, she is outstanding too.  She has a tough role because there are times when she knows Curtis’s behavior is destructive to her family but ultimately she must stand by the man she loves and never wants to lose.

I just want to briefly mention the finale of the film, which I both love and have questions about.  Without context these thoughts will mean little, and I am not going to ruin the ending, but I also just want to make a note of it.  Anyway, the ending, I love it because it is such a beautiful and emotional moment especially between a father and his daughter, but at the same time I’m not sure if it goes against what the rest of the film is about.

Overall, I was blown away by “Take Shelter” and look forward to revisiting it again soon.  I think director Jeff Nichols is a talent to watch and I am now going to search out his debut film “Shotgun Stories”.

4.5 Stars.

INNOCENT SATURDAY - MIFF 2011

Oh, the missed opportunity this film is, all the potential this film had, and this is what we got?!?  I was very excited when I realized that this film was about the Chernobyl incident as I thought I was going to get an in-depth and serious look into this tragic accident and the people it affected.  

With the exception of the terrible handheld shaky camerawork, the film starts well with communist party member Valerij fleeing with his girlfriend to escape the neighbouring town they live in from the devastating consequences of the nuclear reactor explosion.  Valerij had visited the power-plant shortly after the explosion, but had been left with strict instructions to not let anyone know in town, in an attempt to avoid panic.  After missing the train out of town by mere seconds, Valerij knows he is doomed and ends up finding his old band-mate friends to try and make amends with.  

So instead of a look at the actual incident and what caused it, we get to spend a depressing ninety minutes with a man at a wedding party (which is where the band is performing).  He is depressed because he knows that these brief moments of happiness are all for naught, as the large levels of radiation about to hit this town are going to cause more pain than can be imagined.

Basically nothing happens at all during “Innocent Saturday”.  We get long scenes of the band playing and the guests dancing and yes, it is sad that these were the kinds of innocent people who were affected by this disaster especially when it is revealed that one of the characters is pregnant, but it is not enough.  The film just lacks focus making it a pretty unpleasant film to watch.  Contributing to that unpleasantness is the terrible camerawork throughout the film which just irritated me no end.

At the end of the film it is explained that the town was not evacuated for thirty six hours after the explosion which is just a disgrace, and I wish the film was more about that, because the film we got, I just did not enjoy at all

1.5 Stars.

BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE - MIFF 2011

This was the final of the MIFF “classic” films I was seeing this year and after having seen the 11:30pm session the night before, I almost passed on this 11am session since I had already seen this film previous.  “Barking Dogs Never Bite” is South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho’s debut feature and it is such a great film that I was glad I decided to go to the screening in the end.  In fact, I liked it so much, I enjoyed it more than the first time I saw it.

The film is about a guy, Yun-Ju, who lives in a large apartment block who has studied to become a professor, but due to the limited number of opportunities, he realizes that he will have to bribe a dean to secure a position.  The only problem is he has no money.  He also has to deal with his overly demanding pregnant wife who clearly wears the pants in the relationship.  One day while stressing about his future, he hears a dog barking non-stop.  The constant yapping gets into his head, until he cracks and goes looking for the mutt, which he finds.  Trying to make sure that the dog will stay quiet (the dog has stopped barking since he has been found) is harder than it looks, and after not being able to bring himself to throw the dog from the building’s roof, he instead heads down to the basement where he locks the dog in an unused cupboard.  He has succeeded, he has found silence.

Meanwhile, a young office worker Hyeon-Nam (the always great Bae Doo-Na) dreams of becoming famous after witnessing on television a young bank worker fighting off thieves.  Seeing the fame that girl achieved from the incident, she decides she wants the same for herself.  Back at the apartment block, the barking has started again, and after Yun-Ju runs outside to see where it is coming from, he immediately spots the culprit.  He also realizes his mistake as he passes a “lost dog” poster with a picture of the first dog he trapped downstairs.  At the bottom of the poster it states “Can’t bark due to a throat operation”.  He rushes to where he put the dog but is unfortunately too late – the dog has perished.  Still no time for regrets, he still has to catch the right dog, which in hilarious circumstances he does and this time he is brave enough to throw the poor dog from the roof to its death.  However this time there is a witness to his crime.  Amazingly Hyeon-Nam saw Yun-Ju throw the dog, and realizing this is her chance to become famous, sets off after him.  A side-splitting chase scene follows, but ultimately Yun-Ju gets away, but when he gets home he is shocked to discover that his wife has just bought a dog for a pet.

The thing that is so evident while watching “Barking Dogs Never Bite” is that Bong Joon-Ho was a master of his craft right from the start.  This is a magnificently directed film.  His camerawork is amazing and all of his choices just seem to work.  For example, the times when he does choose to use slow-motion, it works to great comedic effect.  That is what this film is, by the way, a fantastic black comedy.  That is another part of its genius, is that the tone of this film is just spot on.  It has some quite strange things in it, but it is forever funny.  Although there is comedy in “The Host”, he hasn’t really tackled another comedy since “Barking Dogs Never Bite” which is a shame because he certainly understands it (though what he has since given us has been brilliant, so I cannot complain).  All of the performances are pitch-perfect (which is a hard thing to achieve in a film like this) and the dogs themselves are great.  Beware if you are a dog lover because you may have a hard time with this film, but there is a disclaimer at the start of the film assuring us that “no dogs were harmed in the making of this film”.

4 Stars.