Mud

Let me just begin by saying Mud has the most heart I've seen in any movie this year. It's incredible that a story that is mostly based on characters talking and interacting, a story that unfolds so slowly and patiently on the screen, can be so gripping and affecting. But this is what Jeff Nichols does. His last film, Take Shelter, was also a slow-paced, very character driven tale. And while both films have many elements in common and I give a slight edge to Take Shelter, Mud is still among the best movies I've seen this year.

Scene of the Week - Take Shelter

The Storm

directed by Jeff Nichols

The scene: The film tells the story of a man obsessed with building a storm shelter. Throughout the movie he is unsure whether what he is seeing is real or fake - hallucinations caused by schizophrenia he suspects he may be suffering from. In the finale, his wife finally convinces him to leave his paranoia behind and spend a day with her and their daughter on the beach. He agrees and the last scene of the movie shows him playing with his deaf daughter as she suddenly raises and shows him the symbol for the storm. He stands up and looks at something in the distance. Then we cut to his wife, who looks stunned, glancing at the distance and then at him. We see weird yellow raindrops falling on her hand, same we saw in the film's opening. And we finally see she is looking at the horrible storm approaching them. The ending is ambiguous - whether it's all symbolic showing that the wife accepted her husband's condition or - something I chose to believe in - it's cruelly ironic - the husband finally caved in and left the safety and now they are away from the shelter, facing death. The important thing though, is that they are together.

Take Shelter

94/100 (120 min, 2011)
Plot: Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.
Director: Jeff Nichols
Writer: Jeff Nichols
Stars: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain and Shea Whigham

"Is anyone seeing this?"

I love watching movies without knowing anything about them. I thought "Take Shelter" will be a story of frantically religious man since I heard he is having "apocalyptic visions". But religion is not a factor in this story. The fact this man's visions are apocalyptic comes from the fact they are paralyzingly scary. They depict things that would frighten every single one of us - beloved pet attacking you, your child in peril, stranger outside your window who then tries to enter your house. Curtis, the main character of the story, suffers those visions through his nightmares and begins to question his sanity.

The best thing about "Take Shelter" aside from its incredible atmosphere is that as Curtis himself, we do not know the reason for his visions. His mother is schizophrenic so he thinks that he is too. When he takes pills the doctor gave him to calm him down he becomes  a little bit better. But then the visions come back, being more and more insane. There are evidence for both reasons - either he is indeed crazy or something terrible is happening. Curtis decides to build a shelter, to protect his family which causes a tension between him and his wife Samantha. But he is determined - if what he is seeing are the signs of what is to come, he wants to do everything to keep his loved ones safe.