Jeff Nichols is worth watching for the care he takes with frightened people and the families around them. Take Shelter rewards his patience; The Bikeriders keeps too many of its men at a distance.
Fi1m perspective
A father tries to keep his family safe and begins to put their good life at risk. In Take Shelter (2011), Nichols makes that change frightening because he has first given us reasons to care about the household. We were disturbed by how easily Curtis LaForche's protectiveness became a danger to the people around him. Michael Shannon makes the fear credible without settling what we should believe. Nichols gives concern for the family as much weight as the threat of catastrophe.
Shotgun Stories (2007) established the Southern focus and the partnership with Shannon that would recur through Nichols's work. Mud (2012) used coming-of-age storytelling, while Midnight Special (2016) took him into science fiction. Loving (2016) belongs alongside Take Shelter and Mud in its close attention to a person under pressure. His recurring interest is in rural and working-class people, with genre stories built around their everyday lives.
Shannon has appeared in every feature, and Take Shelter gives him the difficult job of making both fear and scepticism seem reasonable. Nichols, who wrote as well as directed it, does not rush to explain Curtis. Nor does he forget the other people who have to live with Curtis's fears. Yet the film has stretches that repeat an anxiety Shannon has already made clear, and we wanted Nichols to move on.
In The Bikeriders (2024), cinematographer Adam Stone, who has shot all Nichols's features, supplies handsome lighting, but the storytelling keeps us outside the club. Nichols adapts Danny Lyon's 1968 book of photographs through Kathy, played by Jodie Comer, recounting club life into a photographer's tape recorder. The larger ensemble gives him more men to follow, but too many pass through without becoming people we understand. Austin Butler's Benny is the central problem: we are given the pose and little of the person. The interviews leave us waiting to get closer.
Comer and Tom Hardy give The Bikeriders enough life to make it worth considering for the performances. We hope Nichols gives his actors more to work with next time. Start with Take Shelter, where our concern for the family earns most, if not quite all, of the time he asks us to spend with them.
Biography
Jeff Nichols is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Born on 7 December 1978 in Little Rock, Arkansas, he studied filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Nichols began his career with the independent feature Shotgun Stories (2007). He has since directed and written Take Shelter (2011), Mud (2012), Midnight Special (2016), Loving (2016) and The Bikeriders (2023), on which he is credited as director and writer. He has maintained a long collaboration with actor Michael Shannon, who has appeared in all his feature films.
