movie reviews - Horrorphile

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“God gave us violence to wage in his honour.”

Martin Scorsese, arguably the greatest living American director, has delivered some of the finest examples of bravura cinema storytelling ever put to celluloid; Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, Goodfellas, Cape Fear (1991), Casino, and The Departed, movies that expose the most potent and fragile elements of humanity; dark and resonant studies of character, faith and betrayal, loyalty and deception … and the glorious beast of violence.

Although Scorsese has worked with original screenplays, he frequently prefers to direct a story adapted from a novel, painting his own shades on the story’s multi-layered levels (A Martin Scorsese Picture). Shutter Island (2010) is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane and has been adapted for the screen by Laeta Kalogridis (who penned Oliver Stone’s Alexander and the Russian sf-horror Night Watch – talk about chalk and cheese!) Scorsese has grabbed the baton and he runs hard; Shutter Island is the best movie he’s made since Casino.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Teddy

To analyse this movie in any great depth is to fiddle ungraciously with the movie’s great conceit. And therein lies The Rub. Scorsese is essentially taking the paranoid brilliance of Phillip K. Dick and injecting it into the intensity of a Hitchcockian psychological thriller, laced with Gothic overtones, and anchored in a dark historical context. Shutter Island is pure nightmare, a slow-burner that smolders away for two hours, leaving third-degree wounds across your psyche by movie’s end. Where had the reality ended and the insanity begun? Where had truth been masked and the façade of lies fabricated? Is everything clear cut, or is everything within a frame?

Mark Ruffalo as Chuck

It’s 1954 and US marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are investigating the mysterious disappearance of a patient from a high security institution for the criminally insane called Ashecliffe, on ominous Shutter Island. On the island Teddy and Chuck met the affable head Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and his associate Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow). Almost immediately Teddy deduces that all is not what is seems. There are demons in Teddy’s closet and the onset of a ferocious hurricane seems to be aggravating them.

Ben Kingsley as Dr. Cawley

Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring

Like Phillip K. Dick’s famous novel Time Out of Joint and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Shutter Island plays on the audience’s suspicions, on the character’s paranoia, and on the duplicity of the narrative itself. On the surface the movie is a convoluted murder mystery, but once the surface is peeled back, the darkness gleams like a monster waiting in the abyss. Packaged in Scorsese’s usual high calibre production style; fluid, striking camerawork and cinematography, edgy and compelling use of music (a diverse range of sourced pieces from Mahler to Cage), elliptical editing (from Scorsese’s ever-loyal Thelma Schoonmaker), and a fantastic cast that sees DiCaprio put in some of the best work of his career, but also features a shining performance from Kingsley, solid work from Ruffalo, with the always excellent Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer and Elias Koteas (seemingly channeling De Niro) in small pivotal parts, and in one delightfully menacing scene (which felt like it was conjured from the mind of Roald Dahl), Ted Levine as the Warden.

Shutter Island Leonardo DeCaprio and Michelle Williams

Teddy has nightmares of his dead wife (Michelle Williams)

Shutter Island Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo

Teddy and Chuck confront the storm head on

Shutter Island is, however, very talky, and I felt some two-hander scenes went on too long, such as Teddy’s encounters with George Noyce (Jackie Earl Haley) and Rachel 2 (Clarkson). Perhaps this is reflective of screenwriter Kalogridis trying to harness too much of the novel’s literary weight? Apparently, however, there were considerable modifications made to Lehane’s original story to steer the screenplay toward being a more action-oriented “blockbuster” (and rightfully so the movie has given Scorsese and DiCaprio career highs in box office openings). Thankfully Scorsese’s innate ability to maintain audience interest simply due to the performances he elicits from his actors prevents the movie from becoming turgid or tedious.

Does the lighthouse contain the truth?

The last ten or so minutes reveals quite the masterminded operation that in itself questions everything we’ve witnessed as an audience. This is moviemaking as workshop; the artifice that continues to be sculpted as it is polished; the art of hallucination amidst the pretence of radical experimentation. If a patient is diagnosed as insane, then any rationale or defence mechanism offered by the patient must be taken with a grain of salt by those deemed sane. Shutter Island will no doubt reward and confound with repeat viewings.

“What would be worse? To live as a monster or die as a good man?”

Here's the trailer: