Tag Archives: Jeff Nichols

CANNES REVIEW: Mud

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Mud
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Written by: Jeff Nichols (screenplay)
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Reese Witherspoon and Michael Shannon

American swamplands were a preoccupation of several films at Cannes this year, including The Paperboy, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Mud, the latest film from up-and-coming director Jeff Nichols.  Mud is the story of children who discover an outlaw living on a small island off the coast of their town.  They decide to help him reunite with his girlfriend and escape from the hired thugs who are after him.

The movie follows a fairly straightforward premise and is nothing really new in terms of structure.  Then again, neither was Nichols’ first feature, last year’s Take Shelter, which debuted to much critical praise and gave him the momentum to make this film.  He is a director of atmosphere and off-beat execution.  

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REVIEW: Take Shelter

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Take Shelter
Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Written by: Jeff Nichols (screenplay)
Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart and Shea Whigham

Madness and the movies have an unprecedented history in front of and behind the camera, from the institutional insanity of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to Francis Ford Coppola’s infamous filming nightmare during Apocalypse Now.  Madness inhabited the whole of both of those productions, but the writer/director Jeff Nichols takes an individual approach with his new film Take Shelter.

Take Shelter has much more in common with Melancholia (another apocalyptic vision from 2011) than it does with either of those 70s hysteria classics, though.  Its focus is individual madness by way of the apocalypse.  Pairing the two together, however, makes the madness justified.  Curtis (Michael Shannon) is plagued with frightening nightmares in his sleep and in reality; his dog attacks him, zombie-like strangers abduct his deaf daughter and a menacing swarm of birds zip around the cloudy sky.

Nichols restrains those visions though, holding back on gore in favor of mood and tension. Take Shelter is a fairly basic “Why doesn’t anybody believe me?!” story on the surface, but Nichols throws a wrench in those proceedings by alienating the audience from Curtis as well.  Not only do his wife (Jessica Chastain) and co-workers slowly drift away from him, but the audience privy to his disturbing hallucinations do as well.  Depending on how you read the ending, though, Curtis may have the last wicked laugh.

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