Tag: Michael Shannon

‘Man of Steel’: Wonderful Women, Super Masculinity

Movie poster for Man of Steel
This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and is cross-posted with permission.
Amy Adams is amazing as Lois Lane in Man of Steel. Her version of Lois is fearless, witty and wise. Diane Lane and Ayelet Zurer as the respective mothers of Superman are also amazing, as is the fact that both Superman’s Kryptonian mother, Lara Lor-Van (played by Zurer), and his human mother, Martha Kent (played by Lane), are displayed as equal partners with equal power and say to his two fathers. Further, not only are the heroic females strongly played and given substantial dialog, but so, too, is the lead female villain, Faora-Ul (Antje Trau), second-in-command to the Kryptonian General, given just as much screen time, dialogue, and power (if not more) than Zod, the Kryptonian super-villain played by Michael Shannon.
Michael Shannon as General Zod in Man of Steel

In general, Man of Steel, the latest film iteration of the Superman story, conveys that women are just as key to the Superman narrative as men. This is true from the opening moment, when the birth scene of baby Kal-El, who will grow up to be Superman/Clark Kent, focuses on his mother Lara. Then, the decision to send their child to earth is equally shared by Lara and Jor-El (the Kryptonian scientist played by Russell Crowe). Once the movie shifts to the young Clark’s life on earth, his human parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent (Lane and Kevin Costner), are again equally featured. Lane is particularly strong as Martha, saving Clark from the monsters in his own head in an early scene, and later supporting him as he struggles with what the revelation of his identity has wrought. Part of the consequence of this revelation is the destruction of her home—but the only thing she worries about salvaging is the photo albums, telling Superman not to worry about the house, that “it’s only stuff.”

All of this may seem relatively minor, but it is rare for superhero movies to feature females in important, non-sexualized, non-damsel-in-distress roles (as recent articles and Twitter buzz has focused on, particularly in relation to the fact there is still no Wonder Woman movie). It is rare to depict women as non-materialistic and wise, not to mention portraying mothers as being alive (especially in Disney films!), let alone being as important as fathers are. As such, I had planned to focus on the females in the film for my review.

Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Antje Traue in Man of Steel
Alas, after looking up the cast of the film on IMDB in order to write this review and coming across the image of the young boy who plays 9-year-old Clark Kent (Cooper Timberline) posing with arms bent on hips, a stern look on his face and a cape flowing out behind him—an image that smacks of muscular masculinity—I was consumed by the image of my own son, age three or thereabouts, running around the house endlessly in his Superman costume. This, coupled with two very young boys who sat in front of me at the screening, astride their mother’s lap, asking questions like “Why isn’t Superman flying?” and “Where is Superman’s cape?” got me thinking: How does the iconic image of Superman shape young boys’ concepts of masculinity? And, given that Superman is generally viewed as the ideal super-hero model for boys (less dark than Batman, less conflicted than Spiderman, more memorable and enduring than Iron Man, Aquaman and so on), what does this new movie deliver in terms of modeling “super masculinity”?
Cooper Timberline as a young Clark Kent in Man of Steel
On the one hand, there are many positives. The film questions hyper-masculinity, militarism and other power-over models, or the reliance on brawn over brains. It condemns the sexual objectification of women, macho bravado and the bullying aspects of male culture.

On the other, though it is critical of hyper-masculinity and the violence it engenders, the film’s extended action-and-explosion-packed ending undercuts this critique. At the level of content, the film offers a feminist-friendly version of Superman, but its visuals—especially the extended fight scenes between Superman and Zod (which dominate the last 45 minutes or so)—contradict this narrative. The content says “Women and men are equally important and violence/domination is bad for everyone” but the visuals say “Let’s blow shit up and watch dudes punch each other through buildings!!”

Still from Man of Steel
Back to the positives, the film not only condemns sexual objectification and harassment of women, or the ways in which traditional masculinity harms women, but also denounces men’s bullying of and violence toward one another—the ways in which traditional masculinity also harms men. Near the start of the film, when a man slaps a waitress’ butt, Clark, working as a busboy, intervenes, calling out the man for his inappropriate behavior. The man then goads Clark with a “what are you gonna do about it” attitude, dumping a beer over his head. The other men at the bar snigger in approval. Rather than resorting to violence, though, Clark walks away. Similarly, later in the film, in a flashback to when Clark was in middle school, a group of boys attack him, prodding him to fight back, but he refuses. Again, the males act in pack fashion, spurring one another to be violent and criticizing those who do not “live up” to the violent ethos of being a “real” man.

The central male characters who champion violence are also rebuked in the film, but none more so than Zod for his imperialistic, genocidal and militaristic goals. The film deserves props here for showing that women can not only be just as good as men, they can also be just as bad as them—exemplified by Zod’s second in a command, a woman. In so doing, it de-genders violence, showing that it is not inherently male but rather that the power-over mentality is the problem, not the gender of the person who buys into it. The weapon-happy stance of the military is also reproached, as when Colonel Nathan Hardy (Christopher Meloni) calls for his soldiers to shoot at Superman, or when General Swanwick (Harry Lennix) is rebuked for sic’ing a surveillance drone on Superman (a very timely rebuke indeed!)

Soldiers in Man of Steel
In contrast to these power- and weapon-happy males, the film offers various representations of a kinder, gentler, more positive masculinity via Jor-El and Jonathan Kent, Superman’s two fathers. Both of these figures encourage Clark/Superman to act with integrity and empathy. Framing him as “the bridge between two worlds,” these fathers insist that Clark/Superman can “embody the best of both worlds” and bring a message of hope that insists “every person can be a force for good.”

Here, the film circulates around the fear of difference in ways that nod to the narrative that arguably undergrids the original comic—a narrative that has been read as criticizing racism and, in particular, anti-Semitism. The author, much like Clark in various iterations of the story, was bullied as a kid, and the original comics were penned during the years preceding World War II and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Thus it’s not a stretch to read Superman as a racialized underdog hero, an “alien” who is despised for his difference. His Kryptonian mother’s comment at the outset of the film underscore this reading. She worries that Kal (Clark’s Kryptonian name) will “be an outcast, a freak” on earth. His human parents share similar fears, encouraging him to hide his difference, to “pass” as human. But partway through the film, Kal/Clark sheds his closeted identity in order to save earth and its inhabitants.

Henry Cavill as Superman
In a pivotal scene, he confronts the military brass who have handcuffed him upon the discovery of his “alien-ness,” saying, “You’re scared of me because you can’t control me.” Here, a bevy of connotations arise—how violence is about control, how difference is controlled through violence so that those in power can maintain their power, how viewing difference as an alien threat leads to violence. But, as Superman insists, the inability to control him does not make him an enemy. (U.S. government and military leaders please take note: Just because we cannot control what other countries do, this does not make them our enemy.)

Here and elsewhere, this version of the Superman story questions the way in which power-over mentality, coupled with hyper-masculine bravado, will lead to planetary ruin. Metaphorically, the film questions the reliance on brawn (embodied by Zod and the military brass) over brains (embodied by Jor-el) and heart (embodied by Superman). Further, the Krypton/Earth binary can be seen as emblemmatic of traditional notions of male and female, with the powerful Krypton threatening to control and/or annihilate Earth. Instead of maintaining these dichotomies, the film suggests that both Kryptonians and humans, males and females, can be a “bridge” to a better world. The movie also takes pains to depict Lois and Superman as a team, rather than as a savior and his damsel in distress. This is particularly underscored near the end of the film when someone looks on at the pair after the near destruction of earth, and says “THEY saved us” not “He saved us” or “Superman saved us.”

Lois is depicted not only as a fearless, intrepid investigative journalist, but also adept at figuring out Kryptonian ships and carrying out plans of escape/survival. Near the end of the film, she tells Superman, “I know how to stop them” (Zod and company). As such, she is as much superhero as he, though she is human and he is super-human. To make her even more amazing, she is clearly cognizant of hyper-masculine posturing, as when she is waiting to be shown a Russian submarine the military thinks they have found and says to the brass, who are verbally trying to out-macho each other, “If we are done measuring dicks…can you show me what you found?”

Laurence Fischburne and Amy Adams in Man of Steel
On the less positive side, Superman, as the personification of “super masculinity,” is—as indicated by the reboot title—a hyper-muscular man of steel. His moniker suggests he is hard, unbreakable, impervious and made of muscle—notions that mesh well with the unattainable ideal of masculinity currently in circulation and which are embodied via his excessively built form. Though he uses his strength for good and resorts to violence only as a last resort, the overly-long excessive fight scene between he and General Zod contradicts the earlier narrative claims the movie makes regarding violence, militarism and power. If these things are bad (as the first three-quarters of the film suggests) why do we need to watch scene after scene of he and Zod punching each other, destroying buildings and displaying their uber-strength? Why was it necessary to destroy multiple buildings, cars, planes, semi-trucks, satellites and so on in a way that makes Spock’s overly-long fight scene with Khan in the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness seem short by comparison?

My sense is that those in charge of filming, editing and special effects were loathe to cut these visually arresting scenes. Which reminds me of some comments I heard walking out of the film: “I feel like I am on sensory overload,” “I feel like my senses have been assaulted,” and “After all those explosions, I think I lost some hearing.” As these comments suggest, these action scenes can in themselves be viewed as a form of assault on the audience—one that, admittedly, certain audiences crave—but one that nonetheless suggests that the way to be “super” (as a man or a film) is to be violent, to blow shit up, to be stronger than the other guy/gal.

Laurence Fishburne during some explosions in Man of Steel
As the fight scenes dragged on and on, the two young boys in front of me stopped squirming in their seats and stared at the explosive images on the screen—images that screamed the only way to “win” and be “super” is via violence and weaponry, or have a body that is itself a weapon. This is not the image I hold of my son running around in his Superman costume at age 3, nor of his smiling, dimpled face and curly-haired locks in his kindergarten picture (in which he’s wearing a Superman t-shirt). No, that boy liked the idea of flying, not killing. But with so many images that teach boys (and girls) that to be a “super-male” is to be one capable of violence, how can we expect our boys to soar in ways that promote messages of hope, inclusivity and an insistence “every person can be a force for good”?

I don’t have the answer. But I do know that my now-16-year-old-son, who attended the screening with me, had a key complaint about the film: “The fight scenes were way too excessive.” If a teenager raised in a culture that champions such scenes as “the stuff great blockbuster movies are made of” gets this, why the heck can’t Hollywood?

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Choose Your Own Sexist Adventure: Victim Blaming, Domestic Violence, and the Glorification of the Nice Guy™ in ‘Mud’

Matthew McConaughey all over the movie poster for Mud
Written by Stephanie Rogers, who spoils the entire movie. 
I wanted to see Mud because it looked like an interesting film about the cult of masculinity. It is, in fact, a film about masculinity and father-son relationships, but it goes out of its way to avoid offering an actual critique of masculinity. If anything, Mud celebrates the masculine by demonizing the feminine. The women in this film carry the sole responsibility of ruining every dude character’s life, and Mud screams through a megaphone its Women Are Awful message from the first scene all the way to “Help Me, Rhonda” playing over the closing credits. And I thought Side Effects was bad.
I hated that I had to hate Mud; the young boy who plays Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) blew my mind, and Matthew McConaughey as Mud gave his best performance since Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (ha). Reese Witherspoon somehow even managed to garner sympathy for a second with her ten minutes on screen, a serious feat given the fact that the character she plays (Juniper) gets blamed by everyone for Mud’s predicament as a fugitive in hiding. Ellis’s parents, too, particularly Sarah Paulson (as Mary Lee) of recent American Horror Story: Asylum fame, gave moving performances, and I especially liked Michael Shannon’s three brief scenes as Galen—not because anything other than sexism and man-childness occur—but because he always commands the screen (see Take Shelter and Revolutionary Road). The actors, specifically the two young boys, save this film from entirely shitting all over itself.
Jacob Lofland (Neckbone) and Tye Sheridan (Ellis) in Mud
Matthew McConaughey plays Mud, the title character, and I keep reading everywhere that Mud is a retelling of Huck Finn, so okay. Two 14-year-old boys, Ellis and Neckbone (best. name. ever.), live in a poor yet quaint and lovely town on the Mississippi River. In conventional boys-as-adventurous-explorers fashion, they sneak their small boat off to an island down the river where they find an abandoned boat stuck in a tree. After climbing up there and sifting through a treasure trove of Penthouse magazines (because that’s necessary) and finding a bag of canned beans, they realize someone lives on the boat. Mud! The rest of the film shows men bonding with one another by objectifying women, beating up men to defend the honor of women, and blaming women both for the abuse inflicted upon them by men and for the problems they “cause” for the men around them. It’s a real win-win for the ladies of Mud.
Ellis goes to find Mud on the island

There is not a woman in this movie who doesn’t betray her man, cheat on him, use him, steal his home, rob him of his authenticity, make him move to a boring condo complex in the suburbs, or otherwise force him [out] of his natural and driving male essence … This thing might as well be a river fort with a giant “No Girlz Allowed” sign out front.

Hard to argue with that. Here’s why.
I guess I knew in pretty much the first scene (and in the first lines of dialogue), when Ellis told Neckbone he had a crush on a girl and Neckbone responded with, “She’s got nice titties,” that Mud might walk a fine line between either existing as a coming-of-age tale or offering up a sexist piece of shit under the guise of a coming-of-age tale. It’s a little bit of both.
The freakshow Ellis and Neckbone see when they first meet Mud
The neatly tied up plot goes like this: “Two teenage boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the bounty hunters on his trail and reunite him with his true love.”
Sounds romantic, right? See, I definitely teared up during its most manipulative moments, and I definitely came to care about the characters, and I definitely wanted to leave the theater feeling okay about that rather than feeling guilty for liking a movie that portrayed my gender (and even men), with such simplicity and disrespect. I psychically begged Mud to reverse all its misogyny in the end, to somehow invalidate the sexist ideology it spent nearly two hours enforcing, so that I could write about its complexity and nuance and be all, “Wow, what a smart deconstruction of Southern masculinity!” No dice.
Instead, I get to write about typical Hollywood gender-trope drivel, except it exists in a fucking semi-indie film, and, according to me—a genius—indie films ain’t supposed to rely on Hollywood gender-trope drivel anymore. Let’s begin.
Best Fucking Friends Ever
Every man in this movie tells a story about a woman who wronged him. Every. Single. One. The opening scene (juxtaposed with the “nice titties” comment and the Penthouse porn) shows Galen, Neckbone’s uncle and sole caretaker, getting reamed by his girlfriend. She bolts from his home, whips around to find the two boys sitting on the porch, and says something like, “You make sure you always treat girls like princesses!” We quickly learn that Galen tried something in bed that his girlfriend didn’t like, so when she throws a handful of gravel at him and yells, “I’m a princess!” Galen and the boys (and the audience) laugh at her “irrational” reaction and prudishness. Boys will be boys, honey.
Michael Shannon as Galen, aka Misogynist of the Year
Ellis and Neckbone then leave the house carrying Galen’s book on how to understand the opposite sex (because that’s necessary), and the film officially begins its Women Are Awful message with not even a hint of fucking subtlety or irony: welcome to prudes, princesses, titties, Mars/Venus, hysteria, virgin/whore nonsense, and porn, all within the first five minutes of screen time.
Not surprisingly, we learn that Mud finds himself stuck on an island and running from the law because of Juniper, a woman he fell in love with as a young teenager. The film pulls no punches in its insistence on blaming Juniper for Mud’s situation; she involved herself with an abusive man—a pattern for her—and since Mud lurves her so much, he obviously needed to murder the man responsible for beating her and causing her to miscarry. Juniper’s beating also destroyed her reproductive system (why not?), and that factors strongly into Mud’s decision to kill. The message here, and Mud all but says it, is that robbing a woman of her God-given responsibility to bare children is unforgivable and punishable by death.
I wish that were the only instance of blaming a woman’s reproductive capacity for another man’s misery, but, alas, Tom (a possible former CIA assassin, played creepily by Sam Shepard) can barely stand to interact with anyone ever since his wife and son died during childbirth. He raised Mud as his own son (only Ellis knows his biological father, played by Ray McKinnon), and sits on the river shooting his gun every now and then like a hater. Basically, women are misery-inducing killjoys who suck at performing their duties of procreation.
Sam Shepard waiting to … kill … something?
When women deign to momentarily stop holding hostage the broken hearts of men everywhere, they fall into the coveted category of Desired Object, going from active life ruiners to passive beauty queens.
Reese Witherspoon as Juniper with Smeared Mascara
We first meet Ellis’s girl crush (presumably the one with the nice titties) when Ellis sees an older boy put his hands all over her in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly. May Pearl (the next best character name after Neckbone and Mud) pushes away the sexual harasser, but do you think that stops Ellis from charging through the parking lot with reptilian stealth and jacking a high school senior in the jaw? No way. That would mean not employing the Damsel in Distress trope, and, in turn, allowing women to wield their own authority and agency. But Mud gives no fucks about women other than how they push the male-focused plot forward. As Megan Kearns notes in her review of Iron Man 3:

The problem with the Damsel in Distress trope is that it strips women of their power and insinuates that women need men to rescue or save them. And yet again it places the focus on men, reinforcing the notion that society revolves around men, not women.

That’s Mud in a nutshell, although many reviewers—and most people in the history of everywhere—still manage to confuse misogyny with Nice Guy™ acts of “chivalry.” 
The Piggly Wiggly: after-school hangout
Interestingly Upsettingly Predictably, the moment that moves Ellis away from rescuing May Pearl—after she rewards him with a kiss and tells him to call her, in typical Damsel in Distress trope fashion—relies on even more misogyny. The congregation of boys in the lot stops their commotion cold when Juniper suddenly appears—in all her blonde-haired glory and cut-off daisy dukes—and saunters into the Piggly Wiggly. The boys gape at her. The teenage girls squirm all jealous. And my brain jerks from all this Sexist Whiplash.
To rewind and parse: a boy street harasses a girl; another boy saves her from said harassment (Damsel in Distress); she publically rewards him for saving her; Juniper shows up as Desired Object; women become jealous of one another over male attention; and Ellis and Neckbone begin their inevitable lightweight stalking of Desired Object. In the span of three minutes.
Okay.
Juniper as Desired Object with Black Eye
It gets worse, though, way way worse. Later, Ellis and Neckbone find one of Mud’s bounty hunters, who was hired by the father of the man Mud murdered (hi, alliteration!), beating the crap out of Juniper in a motel room off the highway like, “Bitch, tell me where Mud’s hiding OR ELSE.” (Stalking women comes in handy sometimes, for both bounty hunters and young boys.) Naturally, the boys save our resident Damsel in Distress by bursting through the motel room door at just the right moment and pretending to sell a cooler full of fish (ha). The mob thug smacks Ellis down too, though, and that’s when the film finally turns into the Southern gothic crime thriller I’d been hoping for—but not before Juniper rewards Ellis with a kiss for saving her.
LIKE, ARE WE IN FUCKING SUPER MARIO BROTHERS?!?!?!
May Pearl smiles at her knight in shining armor
The abuse of women in Mud, which serves no purpose other than to normalize domestic violence for the viewer, is horrifying in its own right, but I ultimately found the Blame the Victim ideology the most disturbing aspect of Mud. Not only does the film voyeuristically depict the harassment and physical abuse of women at the hands of men with no critique or analysis, but it also shows the male characters verbally blaming women for the abuse inflicted upon them. Tom, who acts as a father figure to Mud, delivers a lengthy monologue to young Ellis all but calling Juniper a no-good whore for getting involved with so many abusive jerks and ruining Mud’s entire Nice Guy™ life. (You know, because Women Are Awful and consequently at fault for all the choices men make, including their choices to beat the shit out of women.)
Sarah Paulson as Mary Lee in Mud
The film’s message devolves even further to insinuate that—because Mud hasn’t been physically abusive toward Juniper and has even heroically punished the men who have been—he has both earned and deserves her love. And so, the audience can’t help but dislike Juniper when the boys catch her slutting it up at a bar with a billiards-playing bro instead of sailing off to Mexico with Nice Guy™ Mud in his fixed up former tree boat. A small part of me waited for the film to pause on Juniper’s face for a moment and toss up an UNGRATEFUL BITCH title card, just to make sure the audience got the point.
Juniper, aka UNGRATEFUL BITCH

The takeaway to the story seems to be that the only people you can count on in this world are your male friends and your father figure. At the end of the movie, after all hell breaks loose as Ellis and Neckbone’s entanglement with Mud gets crazy and deadly, we see each male character have a touching moment with his father figure. None of them are any good—Ellis’ father can’t make money, Mud’s adopted father is a deadly “assassin,” and Neck’s uncle treats women possibly the worst of any of them—but, heck, in a man’s world it’s the man who teaches you how to man like a man that man man man. And some of the man manning that men masculine you with is hatred of women. Ellis’ father … tells him at one point, “Women are tough. They set you up for some.” Eventually, when Ellis confronts Mud about how much girls suck, Mud replies, “If you find a girl half as good as you, you’ll be all set.” See, a woman can never be as good as a man.

Ellis and Mud talk about Being a Man probably
I can already hear the arguments. Mud exposes the hyper-masculinity present in Southern culture! The boys don’t know any better! That’s just how it is down there! Maybe. But, an intelligent film might consider taking that harmful social construct to task rather than rewarding the male characters for their sexist behavior. Mud presents misogyny as endearing for fuck’s sake, and art—in my opinion—possesses a responsibility to challenge those constructs because it also possesses the power to change them. The dudes in Mud experience no consequences for their bullshit; the film, in fact, revels in their Women Are Awful blues and invites the audience to participate. I’m less interested in whether the depiction of Southern masculinity is authentic. Why not make a statement about how that authentic Southern masculinity hurts women and men?
It never comes close to saying that. But it does manage to deliver a much more cynical message.
Ellis and Neckbone, rightly looking a little terrified of Mud
Halfway through the film, Galen says to Ellis, “This river brings a lot of trash down. You gotta know what’s worth keeping and what’s worth letting go.” Sure, he’s referring to literal trash (as he points to a newly repaired chandelier he found in the river), and he’s referring to Mud, a known fugitive (because he’s seen Ellis and Neckbone hanging out in the river with Mud), but—make no mistake—he’s also referring to women. The film never stops telling us that Women Are Awful, worthless, disposable.
In the end, Ellis’s dad comes to terms with his wife leaving him; Mud finally moves past Juniper; Ellis ogles a new girl (in slow motion!) after May Pearl breaks his heart in public; even Tom learns to leave the death of his wife behind. The men’s collective triumph becomes the fact that they finally learn to let go of The Trash in their lives and hold onto what’s most important—their relationships with other men. So while Mud is a coming-of-age tale in the traditional sense, and coming-of-age tales deliver all kinds of important messages for their young protagonists to absorb, the film mostly wants Ellis to learn that sometimes you just need to fucking drop a bitch.
How sweet.
How sweet, indeed

Indie Spirit Best Feature Nominee: Take Shelter

Take Shelter (2011)

This is a review from Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson.
Writing about Take Shelter for a website like Bitch Flicks is a challenge. Certainly, I can write endlessly about why I loved Take Shelter. There is no doubt in my mind that it was the best film I saw in 2011. I loved the story, I loved the performances, I loved the cinematography and the overall aesthetics of the film, and I loved the fact that it genuinely surprised me with its suspense. But while Take Shelter addresses a wide range of dynamic themes – family, mental illness, standing up for one’s convictions – it is not an explicitly feminist film, nor is it a film that discusses gender issues overtly. As I think about the film from a feminist perspective, however, I realize more and more that the story is actually quite feminist, even if it doesn’t advertise itself as such or appear to be at first glance. 
In Take Shelter, Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon, in a performance that should have garnered him a Best Actor Academy Award nomination) is a husband and a father, working as a construction worker in Ohio. He begins to have a series of nightmares about a storm, one that rains polluted water and causes people and animals to react manically. Fearing that his dreams are prophetic, Curtis decides to build a tornado shelter in his yard, in order to protect his family from the apocalyptic doom he senses is coming. Curtis’ actions cause stress in all of his relationships – familial, social and professional – because no one understands why the shelter construction is so important to him. Curtis does not know if his dreams represent a true impending natural disaster, or if they are actually symptomatic of mental illness, a condition he may be inheriting from his mother (Kathy Baker). Nevertheless, he is driven to build the shelter, and no one can deter him. 
The heart of Take Shelter is the relationship between Curtis, his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain, continuing her string of break-out roles in 2011) and their daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). In many ways, the LaForche family structure is traditional. After all, the entire film is about the lengths one is willing to go in order to protect one’s family. Curtis and Samantha are good, church-going parents who put their family before anything else. But within that traditional model, the gender roles are less defined. Both Curtis and Samantha work outside the home to provide for the family, Curtis as a construction worker and Samantha as an artisan who sells crafts at local markets. Both are committed to raising Hannah, participating equally in school functions and spending time with her at home. Both are strong and determined, taking the sanctity and safety of their family incredibly carefully. The household and family may be traditional, but labor is not divided on gendered lines and neither Curtis nor Samantha is defined within the family unit by gender norms. 
Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and Curtis (Michael Shannon)
The marriage of Curtis and Samantha is one of the most fascinating elements of the film. When their loving relationship is tested by Curtis’ increasingly erratic behavior, Samantha fears for his well-being, and for the well-being of herself and her daughter. But as worried as he makes her, and as little as she understands what he is experiencing, she stands by him. She doesn’t leave, and she doesn’t speak ill of him to others. She responds in a way that most loving spouses would. 
Often in movies, the drama is increased by the collapse of marriages and otherwise committed relationships. I’m not going to say that marriage is easy, or that marriages always work out – it isn’t and they don’t, and it’s good for the media to reflect that reality. But it’s also true that marriages do not just fall apart over one problem. I’ve often seen films about failed marriages that give me pause, because I don’t understand how a strong commitment could fall apart so easily in real life. Part of what I loved about Take Shelter is how believable the LaForche marriage was in this respect. Curtis and Samantha have their problems, but they work through them the way committed couples in real life do. It was refreshing to see an image like that on-screen – an image that I do not think is presented often enough. 
But this isn’t just a story of a woman who stands by her husband. It’s more complicated than that. In an interesting twist on traditional gender roles, it is Samantha who ultimately “saves” Curtis in Take Shelter. Without spoiling the film’s climax (a heart-wrenching, suspenseful scene which remains the best cinema I saw in all of 2011), it is important to note that Curtis only overcomes his nightmares with Samantha’s tough love. She doesn’t just support her husband through his struggles, she demands that he trust her and believe in her commitment to him, which is how he begins to rediscover his own strength. Without Samantha, Curtis may have completely lost sight of himself and his reality. It is she who grounds him and forces him, albeit kicking and screaming, to work with her, rather than against her out of fear or suspicion. Samantha and Curtis are able to protect and preserve their marriage, but it is Samantha who does the heavy lifting. She is no waif or pushover. She creates the marriage she wants to have and makes sure that nothing sabotages it, no matter what. 
In an article for Ms. Magazine Blog, Janell Hobson sums up the message of Take Shelter as such: 

Take Shelter asks us to put our faith back into our intuition (usually associated with women), to accept our maternal gifts (even as they veer off from patriarchal rationality), to listen to our inner voices when all others call us crazy and, most of us all, to surround ourselves with love. 

I couldn’t agree with Hobson more. Take Shelter is about many things, but the theme of familial love is particularly strong. Curtis and Samantha have their struggles, but they survive together, and that sends a vital message. Storms do come. People do become ill. But as long as we have strength in our own personal convictions and love for the people who love us, we will survive those struggles. Traditional as it may be, it’s an important message, one that I wish I saw more frequently in films. Take Shelter presented it honestly and powerfully. Here’s hoping that more films can do the same.

Carrie Nelson is a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders and a Monthly Guest Contributor for Bitch Flicks. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit organization in NYC.