O Abrigo

I hear it so much now. Our national discourse is rich with portent. "It's going to get worse before it gets better", "Something horrible is coming, you'll see", "Soon there will be riots". I'm told these things at conventions and while talking to my neighbors and at breakfast with my mother's old friends. Now Jeff Nichols takes an exhausted phrase in storytelling, ("There's a storm coming") and crafts out of it the movie of the moment. A dark, symbolic mapping of the last five years of the middle-class American experience that's bursting at the mental and financial seams. I have yet to see a finer artistic expression of the current existential crises we face. Michael Shannon is the Noah of our hour, plagued with calamitous visions and barely bearing up under the weight of constant anxiety. In fact, the whole endeavor is buried in quiet distress and prescience. And when the movie finally finds the heart to redeem it's long suffering protagonist, it is through the worst of all possible outcomes. Essential viewing for our times.