It’s not wrong to still get a little excited about the latest offerings from Martin Scorsese. Though some might be inclined to dismiss him these days, making the assertion that he has abandoned the grittier, “simpler” style that made him famous, I find his crisp formalism refreshing. That’s not to say that every film he makes can be a great masterpiece. Then again, he doesn’t seem all that fussed about making masterpieces, anyway. Take, for example, Shutter Island, a capably creepy period thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Set in 1954 on the fictional titular island off the coast of Massachusetts, home to a sprawling mental institution, formerly a Civil War fortress (and surely an egregiously wasteful line item in President Lincoln’s budget). Mentally unstable people are naturally alarming, particularly after they’ve been prodded for years by smugly unenlightened mid-century medical visionaries. So when one of them goes missing, it’s only natural to call in a Federal Marshal, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to see what’s up. Daniels pursues his investigation in a distinctly agitated state, aggravated in no small part by the similarities he sees between Shutter Island and the concentration camp he helped liberate during the war. The chief psychiatrist on site, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) makes a lot of big talk about his progressive, easygoing therapeutic strategies, but his partner, Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), is just a little too unapologetically German for Teddy’s taste. Needless to say, the more he sticks his nose into the secrets of this island, the creepier things get, and the more he begins to question his own sanity.
Scorsese seems to be making his homage to the pulpy, socially conscious films of Samuel Fuller (especially Shock Corridor), meanwhile dressing them up in glossy Hitchcock conventions (see Vertigo and Spellbound). Mental asylums have long been fertile ground for horror, particularly in the days when the likes of Dr. Walter Freeman, the great champion of the frontal lobotomy, were considered experts in the field of mental health. It’s no wonder that Uncle Marty would go back to the 1950′s to make sure his story got all the paranoid punctuation it could get.
Shutter Island has a big twist at the end, but I can’t really say it felt to me like a satisfying “Aha!” moment. Rather, it feels like the whole film was twisted around like an oily rag and had all of its unease and melodrama wrung out of it over my head. It’s only the film’s final proclamation, delivered by DiCaprio, which left me feeling grateful for the journey, as superficial as it was. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 6/8/10
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