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Martin Scorsese’s latest film, “Shutter Island,” opens with federal mah-shals Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) ferrying their way across a dark and stormy sea to an island mental hospital for the criminally insane. It seems that all that Leo’s brought with him are cigarettes and a certain kind of accent, but that turns out to suit us just fine for the rest of the movie. If the above details aren’t enough to set the mood, our beloved Leo is anxious, ill and sick with anxiety right from the beginning, first suffering from seasickness as he stares into his prematurely strained eyes at the mirror in the ship’s dark, apparently deserted hold.
Leo seems completely alone, except, of course, for his stoic buddy Chuck, but despite the bond they share over their accents, it is clear that Teddy is indeed “boss,” as Chuck refers to him. Much of the delight of the movie is in watching DiCaprio muscle his way through the unyielding terrain of the movie’s mysteries while retaining an affecting vulnerability. Though some of the numerous dream-sequences stray into excessive creepiness, including gratuitous Nazi death-camp flashbacks from Teddy’s service in WWII, they will complicate Leo’s character with a little pathos if you let them.
The mystery he confronts is appropriately intractable, complete with a cryptic clue written by a mental patient, repeated warnings to run-while-he-can-blah-blah, dingy Kafka-esque hallways with flickering lights, the requisite unhelpful bureaucratic figures, including a quasi-Nazi, quasi-Freudian psychiatrist who, in one of the best examples of Leo’s lovably futile bravado in the movie, is called out by Leo as a German expatriate on the basis of his lingering German consonants (Leo then smashes a glass with relish) and, finally, rumors that the facility is secretly conducting horrifying medical experiments (more Nazi paranoia) for the purposes of developing a super-human soldier for the new fight against the Soviets.
In the final analysis, Scorsese does a very pleasing job at creating simple, if at times overbearing, tension. It seems the entire island is swelling and screaming with ominous energy; a possessed tree branch, launched loose by the hurricane of ambiguous danger, assaults our two heroes before they find shelter in an equally hostile mausoleum. However, you may not be as happy with this as I was if you have a problem with the simplicity of the concept, or the somewhat heavy-handed generation of dread. It is easy to dismiss Scorsese’s technique as overblown Hollywood histrionics, and the whole ordeal begins to seem more and more like the deluded creation of a madman as it wears on. To make things worse, the many strands of mystery that Scorsese weaves early on (for example, the vague suggestion of Nazism in the homeland) lose vigor and weight by the time the real kicker comes into view.
Ultimately, the movie does aspire to loftier goals than a simple horror-thriller about criminal mental patients and their equally threatening institution; notably, and not at all disappointingly, much of the violence and gruesomeness suggested is never actualized. “Shutter Island” ultimately concerns itself with the staggering and paralyzing possibilities of self-delusion, more specifically that of DiCaprio’s character. While many will be underwhelmed by the eventual treatment of this theme, and wonder whether all the director’s sturm und drang was really necessary, it is undeniably fun to watch the products of this psychotic mind. Perhaps the case of madness can excuse Scorsese’s somewhat excessive enthusiasm towards his concept.
One of the last lines of the film wonders whether it is better to die a good man or to live as a monster. Though undeniably trite, we might think about the filmmaker’s struggle between intelligence and muscle with this question in mind, and pardon Mr. Scorsese if the madness of artistic fabrication has carried him away at all. To judge delusion as pathological is reductive, especially when we might as well just play along.
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The scariest part of this thriller is that I wasn’t able to warn you not to see it sooner, for it will definitely disappoint. It had all the possibilities of a wonderful film: Martin Scorsese directing a psychological thriller, Leonardo DiCaprio as a tortured detective, a marvelous supporting cast and hype lasting since 2008. However, despite all of these elements, something failed to connect.
As detective Ted Daniels, DiCaprio signs on to investigate the escape of a criminally insane and dangerous prisoner from the mental institution on Shutter Island in the early ’50s. He and his partner Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) seem to get the sense that something on Shutter Island is not quite as it seems. Cue the eerie music. DiCaprio must navigate the stories of the many patients and the creepy medical heads of the institution. Through a series of twists, flashbacks, dreams and hallucinations (or are they?) we discover that DiCaprio’s character has a dark past, including the death of his wife and the termination of defenseless Nazis at a concentration camp.
The film begins ominously as the detectives arrive on Shutter Island. The audience is then given a verbal map of the scary places to visit: the graveyard, Ward C where the most dangerous prisoners patients are kept, the caves in the rocky cliffs and most creepily, the out-of-use lighthouse. While the foreshadowing is as blatant as the episode of “Scooby-Doo” where the fisherman was the killer, Scorsese maintains a level of tension not reached by most thrillers.
The tension begins to dissipate in the second act as we then follow DiCaprio to each of these places. At each new location, the various characters of the island lay twists in front of him and the audience. The third act ends with a twist that is not altogether predictable. However, its ineffective presentation doesn’t allow for the same bang that it could have had.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh–there were many things about this movie that did work. If you are a Leonardo Dicaprio fan, then this is some of his finest work. He is the perfect actor for the role, as he plays the deterioration of the psyche that afflicts his character so well. He also maintains that loveably thick Boston accent that he uses unforgettably in “The Departed,” or should I say “The De-pah-ted.”
All of Shutter Island is wonderfully shot and interestingly composed. For a thriller, it exceeds many of the expectations that one would normally have for a “Nightmare on Elm Street”-like movie. It was also intended to be in the form of B-movie, with overly scary sets, absurdly creepy music and off the charts levels of tension. Scorsese does accomplish this, yet if you don’t know you are supposed to be seeing a B-movie parody, it just becomes a B-movie.
If you were a fan of Dennis Lehane’s 2003 best-selling novel of the same title, you won’t be let down. I have heard it follows the plot very strictly and only takes artistic differences that are a great improvement on the book. Also worth noting is the fact that this is director Martin Scorsese’s first return to the thriller genre since “Cape Fear” in 1991. The level of tension Scorsese manages to create is just as potent, but with a far less riveting pay-off.
The supporting cast of Shutter Island is also delightful. Ben Kingsley as Dr. Cawley, the medical head of the institution, takes a big leap from the loveable Gandhi, and becomes borderline menacing. Mark Ruffalo, or the boyfriend of Kirsten Dunst in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” challenges DiCaprio for thickest Boston accent and just might even win.
After two and a half hours, you feel like you know these characters, but you’re mad at the movie for having wasted most of that time. If you’ve been sucked in by the three-year hype this movie has built up, then fine, see it. But if you’re looking for any sort of horror, or drama, or really just quality film-making, maybe take a look at “Valentine’s Day” (WARNING: This is sarcasm. Don’t see that either).