MIFF Blog: Paranoia

by Andrew Moraitis 29 July 2011 00:57 Filmink Festival Coverage

This year, MIFF examines mental illness and paranoia in two features: the documentary 'Bobby Fischer Against the World' and the independent drama 'Take Shelter'.

In the documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World, the filmmakers explain some fundamental statistics about chess: on the first move, a player has 20 possible options; for the second, that number multiplies to 400; overall, the total number of possible chess moves is 10 with 45 zeros. According to one of the film's experts, it is easy to become paranoid in a game of chess: "You're trying to anticipate what your opponent might do. You don't know what he might do, so you're thinking of all the different possibilities. A good chess player is paranoid on the board, but then if you take that paranoia to real life it doesn't play so well."

In the 20^th Century, Bobby Fischer became the biggest name in chess, popularising a previously unromantic pursuit. At 14, he became America's youngest chess master and - before he turned 30 - he earned the title of World Champion. However, Fischer also descended into serious psychological disorder: despite his Jewish heritage, he expressed extreme anti-Semitic sentiment and owned Nazi-propaganda texts like Mein Kampf (a letter to Osama Bin Laden, in which he expresses affinity towards the terrorist's anti-American/Israeli ideology, is thankfully excluded from the film). By the end of his life, Fischer seemed fixated on minutia, polarising former friends and admirers with his hard-right rantings.  

Bobby Fischer Against the World focuses on the conflict within the chess wunderkind, how the traits that made him a genius - obsession, ambition, self-absorption - adversely affected his capacity to relate to others. It must have been a difficult task to explore a character that is as secluded and overtly inaccessible as Fischer (film projects have been feted about the subject, including a version by David Fincher). In clips, Fischer comes across mostly as arrogant and self-regarding, even as a child. Yet, filmmaker Liz Garbus does an excellent job in expressing the character's intensity and paranoia, using archival footage, beautifully expressionistic animation and interviews (with Fischer's associates and admirers) to present a chilling portrait of a man without a home or a country.

If there were ever a feature film made about the older Fischer, Michael Shannon would be an obvious choice for the role. Since his breakout role in Tracy Letts' play Bug, the Kentucky-born actor has successfully transitioned into a highly respected film actor, working with Oliver Stone, Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin (on the film version of Bug), Sam Mendes, Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese (on HBO's Boardwalk Empire).

More than one critic has drawn comparisons between Shannon and another idiosyncratic actor, Christopher Walken. The pair share intimidating looks and sporadic speech patterns, and both often upstage the leads with their magnetic and eccentric supporting performances. The Academy Awards consolidated this comparison when Walken introduced the younger actor at the 2009 ceremony, praising him for his incendiary role as a tortured mathematician in Revolutionary Road. 

Shannon's Walken-like capacity to simultaneously project intelligence and obsessive psychosis serves him well in writer-director Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter. The independent drama - which appeared at Sundance and Cannes earlier this year - stars Shannon as everyman Curtis, who is seemingly living the American Dream: he has a beautiful wife (Tree of Life's Jessica Chastain), a lovely daughter, a managerial position and respected status within his community. However, Curtis is also plagued by violent and apocalyptic nightmares, in which his loved ones attack him and the sky emits petroleum (these sequences are augmented by CGI, transforming Richard Yates-esque suburbia into genre horror).

Shannon's Curtis suffers from the tragedy of the divided self. In this tragedy, the hero is usually decent, but suffers from a self-destructive temptation, which inevitably sends the character into a dark cycle of violence and antagonism. Curtis is intelligent and self-aware; his mother suffers from mental disease and he fears a similar fate, as he seeks counselling for his disorder. Yet, he is also drawn towards these delusions, unable to reconcile his and others' realities. In a late confrontation, Curtis is attacked at a community centre. Initially, he tries to pacify the situation, but eventually explodes into violence and aggression, giving a Henry V-like speech about the oncoming disaster. "Sleep well in your beds," he tells them, a warning that seems more than a little threatening given his derangement.

Shannon and Nichols previously worked together on the modern-Western, Shotgun Stories, and their new collaboration draws excellent results. Some scenes are quietly unsettling, in which Shannon unhinges with his ungainly body language. Others - like the "sleep well" scene and the dream sequences - demand extensive physicality. Curtis has superficial similarities to some of Shannon's previous roles (the paranoid ex-soldier of Bug, the fanatical saviour of World Trade Centre), yet the actor is able to draw new insights into his paranoia and psychosis, finding the intelligent everyman slowly engulfed by such illness.