Film Review: Take Shelter (2011)

Watch Take Shelter before reading this.  The less you know about the film the better.  It is an event that happens to the viewer.

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The 2011 film Take Shelter directed by Jeff Nichols must be one of the most memorable and haunting films I have ever seen and should someday be considered a classic of American cinema.  Even without any consideration of the stunning visuals, eerie score, and incredible acting by Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter compels the viewer's attention solely due to its universal and mythic themes.  In essence the film is a retelling of the story of Noah's Ark:  a storm is coming, take heed, prepare, and risk being considered insane by others.

Much of the genius of Take Shelter is the fact that, until the very end, we as viewers have no idea what kind of story we are watching.  Like the protagonist Curtis we don't know if the visions and dreams of coming apocalypse are valid or if they are symptoms of mental illness, the latter theory given credibility by the fact that Curtis is in his mid-thirties, the same age that his mother was when she was hospitalized for paranoid schizophrenia.  Curtis himself suspects that he is going crazy and seeks out medical help, yet he cannot shake the feeling of impending doom that keeps overwhelming him.

The maxim "to thine own self be true" rests at the foundation of the moral paradox faced by Curtis and by us as viewers.  Do we trust our own experiences or do we chalk up our thoughts to mental illness, trusting the wisdom of the larger human community?  Whether you believe the experiences of Curtis or not depends upon your own judgment about what type of story is unfolding before our eyes:  Is Curtis right and the rest of the world wrong?  Or is Curtis insane?  We don't know... until the final scene.

The parallels with the mythic story of Noah and the ark seem obvious, but the myth itself bears careful reflection for us all.  In the Old Testament water typologically represents chaos and death, whereas the structure of the ark represents order and safety.  Noah, because he is faithful to the voices he is hearing from "God," not only saves himself -- scorning the shame of his neighbors -- but also saves his family and animal creation.

This brings to the fore a perplexing theological question about the role of the prophet.  The prophetic voice always stands outside of the community precisely because she is committed to that community.  The prophet is frequently rejected by her hometown precisely because she has grown to be "unorthodox" according to communal and traditional standards.  The true prophet overruns the tables of the moneychangers, speaks words that others hate to hear, and decides to live according to the "inner light" rather than by merely "falling in line."  The prophets can be described as the loyal opposition because their deep love for their own home community compels them to become a "voice in the wilderness."  Yet the true prophet loathes her own calling because she is constantly aware that she just might be insane and profoundly wrong; she also fears her own pride and proclivity for megalomania.  Thus, the true prophet responds to God's call as Moses did:  "Please choose someone else for I am slow of speech!"  As Caedmon's Call writes from the perspective of the prophet in their remarkable song "Can't Lose You,"

But maybe I missed the nose right on my face
For what's just past it
And maybe I have the gift that everyone speaks so high of
Funny how nobody wants it

The prophet is called to a life of suffering as well, and her greatest suffering is the ridicule and insults of the community that she loves so dearly.  The true prophet fears shame more than she fears death because bringing shame upon the community is the heaviest cross that she can possibly bear.  Yet an inner sense of calling compels her to speak out, even when she is tempted by the idea that a simple, quiet life would be far easier.  Curtis stands as the prototype for a prophet in this case because he follows where his own mind leads, even if it might involve the scorn of friends, family, and community.

What a parable!  Noah's ark/Take Shelter wrestles with deep, universal themes.

Film Review: Columbus (2017)

Director Kogonada’s debut film Columbus is a love letter to art, architecture, nature, and the universal human quest for meaning.  It’s a very deliberately paced and careful film that may turn off a wider public audience – an audience that is currently engulfed, according to one of the film’s protagonists, not in a crisis of attention, but a crisis of interest.  The long (almost unsettling) shots of trees, buildings, and human faces communicates that this film is fundamentally a story of spiritual odyssey.  Cassandra (played masterfully by Haley Lu Richardson) is just a simple Hoosier girl who longs to leave town, but feels compelled to stay in Columbus, Indiana to care for her mentally ill mother.  She providentially meets Jin (John Cho), a Korean-American visiting town due to his father’s sudden illness, and the film centers around the unlikely friendship that forms around these two souls adrift and how their friendship sets both on a new trajectory. 

Jin, an ambitious yet broken out-of-towner with a deeply unhealthy relationship with his father, tends to drown his sorrows in alcohol.  He laments that he cannot appreciate architecture since his father was an expert on the subject and, in Jin’s words, “you grow up around something and it feels like nothing.”  Yet he sees within this young stranger Cassandra an almost mystical, spiritual love for the beauty and order of architecture.  Her mysticism intrigues him, all the more so since he is a wandering soul without any relationship to the spiritual realm.  For Cassie the seemingly mundane, ordinary places of her hometown – two different banks, a church, her elementary school – have taken on a sort of healing power in her life that she does not understand and cannot explain.  Speaking of a bank building, Cassandra attempts to explain to Jin the significance of where they are standing, “I’d probably seen it thousands times before, but one night I looked up and just saw it.”  (I cannot help but think of what John Wesley called the spiritual sensorium, which awakens within those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.)  Jin, always the skeptic, isn’t sure he even believes in the healing power of architecture or holy places so he chooses to ignore Cassie’s testimony.  It is a story of spiritual sight vs. spiritual blindness, yet neither is fully in the dark nor fully enlightened.  Both are on a very complicated journey.  The realism of this is very refreshing.

Throughout the film, Cassandra seems to be lost and yet she also catches glimpses of profound beauty, glimpses that gives her a sort of orientation to life when she doesn’t know her life’s purpose.  Though there is plenty to contrast between Jin and Cassie, they do share some important commonalities:  both wandering souls are given clarity and direction by the other.  Jin seems to begin to gain “sight” thanks to his serendipitous encounter with the odd Hoosier girl.  And Cassie received the answer to her question about where to go in life (isn’t the choice to leave one’s home and family one of the most difficult and universal choices we all have to make?) from this odd and unhappy sojourner.  

“You need to stop feeling bad,” Jin tells Cassandra near the end of the film.  She simply replies, “Yeah, so do you.”  Neither of them are able to extend such grace to themselves and so they give it to one another.  This is a healing, salvific moment for them both.

I loved this film since it wrestles with questions that consume my own mind these days:  Where should I go in life? How does one determine where to go?  And what does all the damn beauty around me mean?  As my friend Bill recently told me around a campfire in Wyoming, for Plato the beginning of all religion is in the pure appreciation of beauty because when it strikes you, there is no denying it.  Beauty becomes a sort of self-evident principle upon which many people choose to orient their lives.  When the architect builds, when the painter paints, when the hurting and lonely dance out their pain under a starry sky, when a child gets lost while looking at a flower, when two strangers become friends – all of these are acts of worship and surrender to beauty.  

The film ultimately challenges us all with a haunting question: Do you appreciate the beauty that is all around you or do you just let it all pass you by?  The answer to this question is, I believe, the difference between living in heaven or living in hell.

The Gospel of Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home struck a deep emotional chord within me when I first saw it in 2012 -- a very, very dark chapter of my life.  I remember my then wife asking me why it had moved me to such tears and I don't think I even knew how to answer her at that time.  I was so utterly alienated from my True Self (for what I mean by this term, see Richard Rohr) that I could not perceive the nature of her question -- a question fundamentally about me.  Yet now I have rewatched this film twice within the past six months and I think I know what my soul was crying about in 2012. I was encountering the gospel of Jesus in this new story/Story of Jeff.  (By the way, the 32 f-bombs in this rated R film -- and its treatment of homosexuality -- means that most "good Christians" wouldn't even watch this mythical story.  Their loss, I guess.)

*Spoilers ahead*

Jeff constantly points away from himself.

Jeff senses a purpose to his existence which is mysterious and beyond himself.  He loves the movie "Signs" because in the end it is the half-consumed cups of water that saves everyone.

Jeff seems to have a "sixth sense" for what is going on around him, an awareness of the holiness of all of life (birds in the air, phone calls, infomercials, traffic jams, random people); everything matters, Jeff thinks, if we can see with the eyes of faith.

Jeff sometimes doubts himself and, in those moments, he is most convinced that the story is absolutely NOT about himself (which it is!  haha! the joke is on Jeff!).  After all, how could the story be about him if he is just a thirty year old pothead living in his mom's basement!?  What could be more irrelevant than such a man?

Jeff, precisely because he alone considers his own life completely expendable, saves everyone in the end.  His mother reconnects with life and love; his brother does too and the ripple effects carry on infinitely.  Completely unaware of his own agency, Jeff has single-handedly saved us ALL with his courageous act of self-sacrificial love and utter abandonment to even death itself.

Jeff is baptized into death, enters the roaring waters we are drowning in, embraces the chaos, and quite literally dies.

And lastly, of course, Jeff is resurrected.  It could not end any other way since this is the Gospel.