redblog

A gripping, atmospheric mystery that might have run stronger with half an hour shaved away, Shutter Island isn’t “major” Scorsese. It’s out to deliver pulpy B-movie thrills and chills and for the most part does so with a steady hand and shaky head.

[The following is a REPRINT of the redblog review of Shutter Island on its theatrical release earlier this year. Shutter Island is now on DVD and available for rental from redbox.]

If you’re looking for a comparison in Martin Scorsese’s cinematic oeuvre, Shutter Island is definitely in Cape Fear territory—like the 1991 remake, this is an homage to the lurid, trashy noir flicks the director grew up on in the ‘50s.

Scorsese, like Jonathan Demme, broke into filmmaking in the early ‘70s under the B-movie tutelage of Roger Corman, and just as Demme drew on those exploitation roots to give The Silence of the Lambs a bloody, pulpy heart, Scorsese is out to give Shutter Island a similar florid, shock feel, even as he works to enrich it with deeper themes about sanity, memory, and self. (The two films even share the great character actor Ted Levine.) The mixed result is a lesser Scorsese film, but even lesser Scorsese is yards above most filmmakers’ best efforts, even when it comes to throw-away genre larks.

Adapted for the screen by Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane’s novel is a decent fit for Scorsese’s thematic and stylistic goals. (Lehane’s novels Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone were the sources for well-received film adaptations.) Set in the mid-‘50s, the story takes a couple of hard-bitten, no-nonsense cops (in this case, Boston-based U.S. Marshals played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo) and plops them down in the middle of a literal insane asylum. The Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane is a set straight out of an American Gothic nightmare: hulking buildings, creepily clinical trappings, even an old Civil War fortress full of horror-movie halls and cages. All of it perched atop a foreboding Boston Harbor island and draped in thick fog and later howling sturm und drang.

Marshals Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) have been summoned to Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious, seemingly impossible disappearance of a once-murderous female patient. Teddy arrives at the institute already in bad shape—puking, exhausted, on edge—and things just get worse. His investigation meets with shadowy secrets, institutional roadblocks, and furtive looks at every turn, until he becomes convinced Something Bad is going on at Ashecliffe and that its head doctors, played with warm menace by Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow, are Up to No Good.

It’s not news that Scorsese is a  tremendously skilled filmmaker–while there are few grand visual flourishes in Shutter Island, the whole time you feel a solid, reliable craftsman is guiding you. In fact, you sometimes don’t realize how many shoddy shortcomings you’re constantly forgiving in other thrillers until you’re in the hands of someone like Scorsese. The director himself doesn’t care much about hiding Shutter Island’s mystery—he’s more interested in how the story is told than whether or not he can catch his audience by surprise.

Still, even he isn’t always perfect. Shutter Island is a film about madness, about peoples’ hidden secrets and dark memories, and Scorsese certainly knows his way around those kinds of characters. From Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and King of Comedy, to Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed, the director has always focused on protagonists who are wrestling with their own demons and drives. But as much as Scorsese has concerned himself over the decades with the emotions men tamp down until they explode, he has never cared much for on-screen explorations of internal psychology. He’s always let his characters express their anger and pain with fists and guns.

But in Shutter Island, Scorsese tries to go inside the psyche of his protagonist—Teddy is haunted by flashbacks to his having helped liberate Dachau during WWII, and is tormented by dreams and visions of his own dead girlfriend, seemingly trying to warn him of dangers ahead. For all his immense cinematic skills, Scorsese is not so deft with dream sequences—directors like Tim Burton or David Lynch may not be on Scorsese’s level as overall filmmakers, but they are much more adept at putting the churning subconscious on screen. Scorsese is more of a realist and a formalist—he gamely gives the dream stuff a shot, but it’s not his strong suit.

The acting is all top-notch—DiCaprio is quietly, steadily cementing his role as one of our finest actors, and Ruffalo is reliably terrific. The film is also filled out with an all-star cast of supporting actors who make each individual scene riveting. That includes von Sydow, Levine, John Carol Lynch, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams, Elias Koteas, and Jackie Earle Haley—some only popping up for one scene, but making it count. (Especially Levine, who in passing gets to toss out a fine crazy eyed, philosophical monologue.) And Kingsley, who’s been doing fine work in small, unseen films in recent years, deserves to be back front and center in more films.

There’s plenty to love about Shutter Island—maybe too much. Scorsese has a hold of a crackerjack story, but in order to draw out its dark emotional impact, he spends a little too much time wandering lost in the storm along with his characters. Still, it all looks amazing with those richly photographed old buildings and their layers of grimy secrets and horrors, the island’s dense foliage and deadly rocky shores whipped and battered by deeply symbolic thunderstorms.

Ultimately it may wind up as handsomely lurid trash, but how much enjoyment you get from Shutter Island will depend on how deep you let its pulpy charms under your skin, and how patient you are in waiting out the resolution of a mystery you may or may not have long since figured out.

Shutter Island is now available for rental in redbox kiosks.

Related Posts

Shutter Island

I Shudder at the Shutter Island Trailer

Real vs. Fake: Shutter Island Poster Edition