Like
his friend and peer, Francis Ford Coppola, director Martin Scorsese
seems to be undergoing a creative rebirth as he heads into his 70th
year. The energy and ingenuity present in his latest venture, Shutter
Island, is more like that of an audacious college film student than the
Oscar-winning veteran architect of some of the cornerstones of American
cinema.
Strange doings abound in the middle of Boston Harbor where a highly
fortified insane asylum is targeted for investigation by a pair of
fedora-wearing, trenchcoat-clad gumshoes. The federal marshals have
come to search for a missing patient inside this secluded sanctuary for
the most dangerous of the criminally disturbed. Teddy Daniels and his
new partner, Chuck Aule immediately chafe at their authority being
subverted by the higher-ranking rules of the asylum and the various
roadblocks the ingenuous-seeming doctors and staff have in place to keep
them from their search. Where is the missing patient? What is everyone
on this island trying to hide? What are the whispered-about experiments
that take place in the island’s mysterious lighthouse? With the
determination and sense of righteousness that helped the former soldier
liberate the concentration camp at Dachau during World War Two, Teddy
has every intention of finding out, if only his own memories and ghosts
of the past would let him get on with it.
From
the opaque gray sea and sky and insistently discordant music that
comprise the start of the film, the byword for what we are about to see
is ominous. The marshals’ first walk across the hospital grounds shows
us patients who would seem utterly benign if not for the manacles around
their legs or arms, or the tell-tale slit across the throat of one
hollow-eyed inmate that matches the smile she gives Teddy. Things only
get more disturbing from there and it’s hammered over our heads that
there’s something very wrong here. Everyone associated with the
hospital, from the guards to the doctors are cheerfully creepy; all of
them patronising and pretending to accommodate while always keeping one
hand behind their backs. The subterfuge is so uniform that it makes the
entire island suspect and the marshals can trust no one.
As
expected, fine performances abound in Shutter Island. Leonardo
DiCaprio’s decidedly unpretty beefier looks compliment the idealistic
federal marshal and war vet. His Bahston accent varies from sounding
like a refugee from a Bowery Boys set to completely nonexistent, but
that fades away in the intensity he brings to his deceptively complex
character. Some of the best moments amongst many hail from a trio of
fine actors; Max Von Sydow is compelling as a psychiatrist who makes an
on-the-fly attempt to shrink Teddy’s head in an era when “you need
therapy” were fightin’ words. Patricia Clarkson’s desperate woman who
might know too much all but steals the film in a matter of minutes, and
Jackie Earle Haley continues his amazing run of embodying creepy enigmas
that would crumble played by lesser hands. Also notable are Emily
Mortimer in her small scene as the woman the marshal might be looking
for and Michelle Williams as Teddy’s departed wife. Williams is a
homespun Lana Turner, who isn’t content to simply exist in her man’s
highly realistic and volatile dreams, she alternately appears out of
thin air to lure him, like a siren, to happiness or destruction.
Shutter Island is part fever-dream and part surrealist art mixed with a
good potboiler. Like a Mickey Spillane pulp novel directed by William
Wellman and photographed by Salvador Dali. A truly chilling
cleverly-woven psychological thriller that keeps one pondering the
twists even after they’ve been explained. So many homages to the films
Scorsese must’ve loved are here; DiCaprio’s fuller face and dogged
squint recall James Cagney in 1935’s G Men. The off-hand one-liners
delivered by Mark Ruffalo as DiCaprio’s partner are sharp as any
pre-code quickie. One can see Alfred Hitchcock’s influence not only in
much of the camera movement and use of the natural scenery, but in the
delivery of the film’s big twist. Scorsese’s fine use of
cinematography, score and editing to beguile and perplex works on many
levels, even to the point of questioning the proficiency of the director
himself; yet when it all unspools, there’s never a false or cheated
feeling to the revelations.
Shutter Island is a trip; a desperately creepy mystery that gets under
the skin and stays there long after you’ve left the theatre. It’s a
Byzantine plunge down the rabbit hole that leaves both its characters
and its audience questioning the very meaning of reality.
Well
done, Mr. Scorsese.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
Feb.
18th, 2010
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