An Island of Film Mastery: With Shutter Island, Scorsese demonstrates his prowess -- again

From the moment we see the foreboding land mass that gives director Martin Scorsese’s latest film its title, we know we have not arrived at a good place – not physically, not emotionally, not spiritually. It’s 1954. Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal sent to investigate a disappearance at Ashcliffe, the mental institution planted on craggy Shutter Island in Boston Harbor, knows he has not arrived at a good place either. We know understand this fact immediately, as we first meet Teddy while he vomits into the toilet below decks on the ferry taking him to the island. When Teddy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, finally gathers himself on deck, the ferry captain tells him there is only one dock because the rest of the shore is sheer cliffs – i.e., one way on, and one way off the jagged pile of stone. As Teddy looks up at his destination, blaring bass strings fill our ears as gray-green Shutter Island fills the screen. Fear begins resonating in our bones. 

 Shutter Island adds more evidence to the argument that Martin Scorsese is perhaps the greatest director of our times. Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (author of two other stories turned into films: Mystic River and Gone, Baby Gone) Shutter Island could have been a run-of-the-mill movie about ignorance and paranoia in the 1950s, just as The Departed could have been just another cop drama or Goodfellas could have been just another mob flick. But like those other award-winning Scorsese works, Shutter Island transcends its material, as Scorsese introduces us to people we would rather not know and places we would rather not go. The trouble is Scorsese’s visuals are so striking and indelible, and the performances he draws from his veteran cast are so engrossing that, like Teddy, we can’t resist. 

Full disclosure here: I haven’t read the novel. But judging from the movie plot, I surmise that the story covered no new territory – creepy hospital setting, evasive jittery staff, patronizing slippery administrators, distrusting surly guards, plenty of icky psychos, enigmatic absent victims, etc. So, no offense to Mr. Lehane, but it’s Scorsese’s brilliance that makes Shutter Island remarkable. No way could written words have evoked the same mixture of wonder and dread that Scorsese’s visuals give us. Teddy dreams of his dead wife, the victim of a fire just two years before his trip to the island. As he embraces her amidst the vibrant colors of their living room, we see her spine is cinder-laced and glowing like a fireplace log. Soon, ashes lilt around them like snow, until she crumbles to black dust. In another extraordinary scene, Teddy flashes back to the day he helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp. Teddy looks down on the camp commandant, who’s squirming on the floor after a botched suicide attempt. The colors of the commandant’s office are as vivid as Teddy’s dreams of his wife and home before their incineration. Instead of ashes, paperwork floats around Teddy, records of the lives destroyed in the camp. The commandant struggles as files rain upon him, and we suppose Teddy will finish the job the officer bungled. Yet, Teddy remains transfixed by the moment, inseparably terrifying and beautiful. We can’t help feeling the same way. 

On Shutter Island, secrecy abounds. There are fleeting clues flying every which way. Frankly, though, the mystery wasn’t hard to sort out. And that annoyed me not at all. Nearly every scene and performance wrought by Scorsese was so dense with metaphor that my mind was feasting on imagination. If you like Scorsese’s work, you will enjoy this film. If you love Scorsese’s work, as I do, you will be enthralled by this film. But even if you don’t care for Scorsese’s work, you will walk out of Shutter Island impressed.

--Reviewed by Bob Dirkes

Comments

[Christine Rojewski]

I got the chance to see this last week. While I also enjoyed it (even though it was a bit drawn out), I must say it was a bit predictable. I know some people in the theater thought the ending took a big twist, but I saw it coming about 10min. or so into the movie. Nonetheless, I would still say it's worth seeing.

[Ken Krause]

I really wasn't planning on seeing it -- I usually don't go in for these types of movies. But your review has me thinking otherwise. It may, in fact, be exactly the kind of thing I like. Thanks.