Creepy German scientists! Nazi's! Holocaust! Menacing lighthouses! Chain-smoking Marshalls! Atmospheric RAIN & Fog! An insane asylum... FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE!! There's not a single frame in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, a stimulating and effective celebration of 40's & 50's B-movie horror's and American film noir that isn't heightened and cranked up to 11. It's a movie about atmosphere and style, and how it evokes an experience on the senses. At the core of Shutter Island is a Leonardo DiCaprio performance commanding order evoking the best of this era of leading men. It's multi-layed with the longing and the desperation of a broken man with an Out of the Past lock & chain on his psyche. DiCaprio's fourth collobration with Scorsese has resulted in by far his most complex character and it may take a few viewings before you realise just how mature his work is here. The expressionistic claustrophobic atmosphere is heavy but it's merely used to serve a deeper emotion than you'll appreciate on the first time around. I'll be seeing it again this week for sure, probably twice more before it finishes it's run in theatres. It demands this repeat factor. I saw Scorsese's latest at a 5.30pm showing on Saturday amongst a 75% full crowd, which no doubt for the DiCaprio factor was itself split 5 to 3 in favour of women. And a lot of young women, many between 17 and 26, and boy were they restless. Lots of yawning, lots of frowning, lots of shuffling. Word of mouth coming out of the cinema was bad, but then Scorsese hasn't made a populist thriller here, no matter how much Paramount Pictures would like it to be. Shutter Island is a personal wish fullfillment of a forgotten era of film-making and the more you know of movies from the 40's and 50's era; the more you're going to love it. It's a movie lover's film, and it's a well crafted addition to the filmography of one of the greatest directors that ever lived. It reminds me more than anything of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, similarly a movie that audiences weren't really expecting from their favourite director/star partnership in the late 1950's and weren't able to fully appreciate for a number of years after. The first thirty minutes of Shutter Island is pure cinematic joy. An ombinous score reminiscent (only in tone, not in similarity) fills the theatre as we struggle to see through a heavy fog. We are on a journey to an island somewhere seemingly left of Skull Island, the home of 30's horror King Kong, and you would be understandably mistaken to think we were on a journey to meet Godzilla. We follow two U.S. Marshalls in gloriously baggy overcoats that don't fit (but they never did in film noir did they; confused and lost post-war veterans trying to dress as men) and a limitless supply of cigarettes. There's Leonardo DiCaprio as Teddy Daniels and his new sidekick Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), a slimed down (from Zodiac at least) Robert Mitchum esque wise-cracking partner. The year is 1954, importantly just a decade beyond World War II. Teddy is seasick, uneasy. The movie begins with the line "pull yourself together Teddy", as he splashes water on his face, bearing into a reflection of his own soul. The island awaits him. A still camera shot as the over-bearing landmass looms closer, and closer, the score thundering and becoming even more extreme. The sequence is never ending, and it reminded me of the finale to The Killing, but instead of the cops walking towards Sterling Hayden, we get our U.S. Marshals nearing the island. Gigantic trouble awaits, you know it because of the clasps of thunder strikes, flashes of lightening bolts and it doesn't let up until Daniels & Chuck have arrived at the gates to the Asylum. It's a wonderfully over-the-top scene and I was grinning all the way through it. Nobody makes movies like this anymore. Like Sgt. Howie's search for the missing girl in The Wicker Man, Teddy & Chuck are assigned to the island in search of a missing patient, Rachel Solondo, a mother who killed her three children. Problem is the asylum is littered with not well-to do folk who sound like they are talking double-speak most of the time and only come across as more sinister the friendlier they attempt to present themselves. There's Ben Kingsley's black suit, bow-tie, shiny round head boffin Dr. Crawley who has the confidence and lack of worry of a man who can't be trusted. There's a former Nazi German officer played by the great Max Von Sydow (who is the best of the supporting bunch) as another doctor who is enjoying his time in this genre like Boris Karloff did for Val Lewton generations ago. From there the movie gets stranger and stranger as the reality skews, and we get flashbacks to supplement the material that tell us Teddy was once a World War II general who was present upon the U.S.'s discovery of a holocaust factory. We soon realise that Teddy is damaged goods; and like all the great film noir protagnists, the past is coming back to haunt his present, he can't quite let something go. Film noir was the highlight of American movies in the mid 20th century, a genre that stood for a post-World War II period where the shock of the atroticities of what men were capable of doing to each other hung heavy over everyone. Men struggling to find a place in society, the suits, fedora hats, it was all a disguise for a masculinity lost. Think James Stewart in Vertigo. And Scorsese captures this period to wondrous effect with regular character remarks to hydrogen bombs, U.S. brain experiments and all other kinds of cold war paranoia. The future was extremely uncertain for the bewildered American male who had literally been to hell and back on the front line and these guys were struggling to put a life with meaning together. You can understand where Teddy came from under these circumstances.
The movie is not without it's problems but I feel like I'm being a bit nit-picky mentioning them. The movie begins on a 10 and stays on that high score before quickly coming down in the middle section where Teddy meets three characters (played by Elias Koteas, Jackie Earle Haley & Patricia Clarkson) that work well as stand-alone scenes but they come in such quick succession that it becomes a case of; "let's meet the next oddball".
The movie then finishes well with as fun an exposition scene as I've ever witnessed, and a wonderful sequence that I won't spoil that occurs during the reveal; though I do think the end is over-long and could have been chopped twenty minutes overall. Although I've only seen a few features this year, I have to take a moment out to pay particluar attention to Robert Richardson's wonderful cinematography which must be in contention for an Academy Award next year. The two time winner (last in 2004 for The Aviator, and recently nominated for Inglourious Basterds) shows off his greatest work to date with as expressive lighting as any picture I've seen in years. Oh how The Wolfman would have soared so much higher with Richardson. Before I saw the trailer for the movie last year, I was sure that Scorsese HAD to shoot this picture in black-and-white. You don't make a Val Lewton picture without really making a Val Lewton picture after all but we would have truly lost something with Richardson's photography if that was the case.
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And about the last twenty minutes, well I'm all about the journey over the ending. Of course the final twenty minute exposition is a little much and you know exactly what hand Scorsese is playing but this movie isn't so much about the surprise but it's deconstruction of Teddy. And do the actions of the characters make sense in the build up to the ending, will it hold up to a second viewing?
I'd say yes, it'll work better on a second viewing. Remember Taxi Driver & Raging Bull; Scorsese's two classic pictures were build on p.o.v. of the characters Robert De Niro inhabited; so watch Shutter Island again with that in mind and tell me it doesn't make sense. No, I mean REALLY watch it (every aspect of it), because it works.