TAKE SHELTER written and directed by Jeff Nichols, with Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham and Kathy Baker. A Mongrel Media release. 121 minutes. rs quSeptember 15, 6 pm, Ryerson September 16, 2:15 pm, Scotiabank 4. See review.
If it feels like you’re seeing Jessica Chastain all over the place… well, you are.
Vaulted onto the global stage at Cannes in Terrence Malick’s The Tree Of Life, where she embodied grace and love as the ethereal mother of Malick’s young protagonist, Chastain subsequently turned up as the socially hapless Celia Foote in surprise summer smash The Help, and just recently as the younger version of Helen Mirren’s Israeli spy character in the thriller The Debt.
Suddenly she’s everywhere. Literally.
“Get a load of this schedule,” she says from an airport lounge at LAX. “I do press in Paris for The Help, and then I go to Venice for Wilde Salome, and then I go to New York for Take Shelter, and then I come to Toronto.”
Chastain’s coming to the Toronto Film Festival with the psychological thriller Take Shelter and the Shakespeare adaptation Coriolanus, two very different features that should cement her status as one of the most versatile and interesting American actors of her generation.
Her role in Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter initially seems fairly straightforward: as the concerned wife of Michael Shannon’s family man, she spends most of her screen time worrying about her husband, who’s experiencing recurring apocalyptic nightmares and spending far too much time reinforcing the storm shelter in their backyard.
“People have asked me what parts have been harder – The Help, The Debt, Take Shelter,” she says. “And for me, Take Shelter was very, very difficult. We didn’t shoot in chronological order, and I have to be so aware of what has happened the moment before. Most of the time, with my character, the subtext is ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And I have to have different grades of what that means. It had to be so subtle, and Jeff and Mike both really helped me.
“Before we shot a scene, I would pull out my binder and look at exactly what had happened before – even if we hadn’t shot it – and we’d all talk through it so I could have it in my head.”
As Shannon’s performance grows bigger and more manic, Chastain becomes stronger and more resolute, grounding the story in psychological reality. To borrow the old line about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Chastain does everything that Shannon does, only backwards and in heels.
“It’s funny that you’d say that,” she says. “I always try to work with actors who are better than me, because they make me better, and he’s like that I really had to keep on my toes. Being in a scene with him, it’s a wild experience. Every moment with Mike is different, and he’s so intense – he has this great power and strength – and at the same time he has a deep well of vulnerability that is so beautiful.”
We should be discussing her performance, but Chastain is so fond of Shannon – and so clearly in awe of him – that she keeps steering the conversation back to his work.
“He’s just not self-conscious,” she says. “A lot of actors are – you can see it sometimes, when they’re a little bit intimidated. He’s just free. He’s free in his body, he’s free in his voice. He’ll do anything – he doesn’t get embarrassed. And to watch someone have that moment in front of a hundred strangers – be so exposed and so free to it – was a learning experience. It inspires me to be more like that.”
Many actors who come up through the Hollywood system have a moment when they stop letting other people steer their careers and start chasing projects they care about.
Working with Malick gave Chastain instant legitimacy, putting her on the radar of major filmmakers. She’s made the most of that opportunity, pursuing work that offers the chance to grow and expand rather than enhance her star status. She took the role of Virgilia in Ralph Fiennes’s modern-day adaptation of Coriolanus just to be part of the cast.
“I went to Juilliard and studied Shakespeare for four years,” she says. “I really missed doing Shakespeare and the classics. So when I had the opportunity to sit down with Ralph and he told me Vanessa Redgrave would be playing Volumnia? Okay, this is a situation where I’m going to be in a room with Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes watching them do Shakespeare. The learning experience is going to be incredible.
“To know that I was going to watch Vanessa Redgrave every single day…. I was going to watch her rehearse, do her scenes. And in 30 years I’ll be able to tell people I did Shakespeare with Vanessa Redgrave. That, to me, is beyond anything.”
Not that she’s averse to being in something popular, of course. More people will see Chastain in The Help than in all her other movies to date – though she doesn’t think it’ll do all that much for her.
“People are gonna be so disappointed when they see me in real life,” she says. “They’re gonna think I’m this voluptuous, gorgeous blond bombshell, and they’ll see me and be like, ‘Oh, you’re nothing like we wanted you to be!’
“That started happening on the set,” she laughs. “All the men, all the crew would look at me – I’m not used to being looked at, I’m not a bombshell – and at the end of the day I’d take my wig off, take the makeup off, put on my cutoffs, put on my T-shirt and walk out of the trailer. The look of disappointment on every man’s face when they realized I wasn’t Celia Foote was quite sobering.”
We’ll be seeing a lot more of the real Chastain in the months to come. In addition to starring in Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome, a meta-textual examination of Oscar Wilde’s play, she’ll be reunited on screen with her Debt co-star, Sam Worthington, in the thriller Texas Killing Fields.
She’ll have so many movies going, you’ll think you see her in line at Tim Hortons. That might actually be the case she’ll be in Toronto shooting Mama this fall for executive producer Guillermo del Toro.
“When I come to the festival, I’ll have like a week to get to know Toronto,” she says. “Then I’m back at the end of September until December.”
Details are scarce about the project, and Chastain’s keeping mum. “All I can tell you is that it has very similar elements to The Ring and The Orphanage. I play a character unlike anyone I’ve ever played. She’s a bit of a punk, and she’s the guardian of two girls. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
Interview Clips
Jessica Chastain on what draws her to her characters:
Chastain on meeting the woman who inspired her Texas Killing Fields character:
Chastain on working with John Hillcoat on The Wettest County In The World:
normw@nowtoronto.com
