“The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
- Ronald Reagan.
“When Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz was asked in Germany this week if the country and its neighbours would suffer a lost decade, his response was unequivocal. “Is Europe going the same way as Japan ? Yes,” Mr Stiglitz said in Lindau at a meeting for Nobel laureates and economics students. “The only way to describe what is going on in some European countries is depression.”
- ‘Spectre of Japan-style lost decade looms over eurozone’, Claire Jones, The Financial
Times, August 22, 2014.
Few films have managed to convey the feeling of approaching menace more effectively than Jeff Nichols’ 2011 drama, Take Shelter. Its blue collar protagonist, Curtis LaForche, played by the lantern-jawed Michael Shannon – whose sepulchral bass tones make his every utterance sound like someone slowly dragging a coffin over a cello – begins to suffer terrifying dreams and visions. The family dog attacks him. Storms rain down thick, discoloured liquid, like motor oil. He begins to worry about his own mental health, given that his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a similar stage in her own life. He responds by building a storm shelter in his back yard. Are his ominous visions simply hallucinations ? Or are they portents of darker things to come ?
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