I have a strong desire to see Shutter Island again. I’m hoping, in desperation, that something will be there to validate this film. I’m going to resist this urge to prevent further disappointment. If Martin Scorsese did not direct this film than this desire would not exist; I’d have written the film off as trivial fun and moved on with my day. Yet there are some directors we hold dear to our heart, and want every new film they make to be important. We desperately try to inflate meaning into what is ultimately amusing, second-tier work. This fondness I hold for one of America’s greatest directors has elsewhere translated into adoration or derision. Those who like the film are over praising it precisely because it is Scorsese, and those who don’t care for the film are severely panning it, which often happens when a great filmmaker does not make a great film (see Spielberg).
Unfortunately the film is pointless. (To continue with this review I need to decide whether or not to reveal specific surprises in the plot that could be considered tantamount to twists. Revelation of plot is irrelevant in a work of serious intent. This begs the question: is this a work of serious intent? I certainly hope not. I’ll split the difference and speak in revealing ambiguity.) The film takes place at a mental institute and its principal theme deals with psychosis. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is looking for a missing patient. What is real in both the present and the past becomes questionable as the film progresses. This is a familiar theme for Scorsese, except he has always dealt with it more subtly and interesting, most famously in Taxi Driver. Travis Bickle is psychotic, to say the least, but he lives in the real world, in Manhattan no less. Bickle is frightening because he is alone, loose among a society that he deems more worthless than himself. In Shutter Island the psychotics are as alienated from society as possible. They are at a mental institute, under the care of doctors, on an island. Unlike Travis Bickle they pose no real threat, so we watch them with amusement instead of wonderment.
To state the extraordinary level of craft, both technical and in the performances, is a redundancy, since I have already stated that this is a film by Martin Scorsese. In Shutter Island the collaboration with cinematographer Robert Richardson doesn’t quite equal their prior work (Casino, Bringing Out the Dead, and The Aviator, which is probably Scorsese’s most stunning work in color), but they do manage to create an intriguing palette of dark tones in the present day sequences and a more lively mixture of contrasting colors in the memory/dream sequences depicting Daniels’ family and wartime experiences. These flashbacks, mostly without dialogue, are in fact more intriguing and sustaining than the principal story. Scorsese has always been a director of action and movement. The flashbacks, particularly a stunning tracking shot of the mass extinction of a group of Nazis, affords him the opportunity to exercise his talent. Most of what happens on Shutter Island is a series of plot driven conversations. Not to say that Scorsese cannot direct a conversation. His first film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, has one of the most originally edited conversations, between Harvey Keitel and Zina Bethune on the Staten Island ferry, which opens the film and sets the tone for the remainder of the film. And of course Raging Bull has some of the most intense, frightening conversations imaginable. Except those were conversations built upon improvisation and human naturalism, creating an energy upon which Scorsese feeds. These conversations are just an endless series of interviews concerning the missing patient and then a long revelation scene at the end. Ultimately the high level of craft and the very fine performance by DiCaprio cannot hide the fact that this is a thematically hollow genre exercise by a great filmmaker.
-Jason Bardin
