Shutter Island

Directed By: Martin Scorsese

Written By: Laeta Kalgridis

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch, and Elias Koteas

Director of Photography: Robert Richardson, Editor: Thelma Shoonmaker, Production Designer: Dante Ferretti

Rated: R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity.

    During the opening minutes of Shutter Island, a new psychological horror film from Martin Scorsese, one might almost feel like they’ve walked into a film by Quentin Tarantino. Ominous tones? Backdrops that remind us we are on a movie set? Long take shots? These little details are Mr. Scorsese’s homage to the films that have helped influence his latest picture—horror films of the 1940s, especially those of Jacques Tournour, as well as Hitchcock, and Italian horror films of the 1970s such as Suspiria. The big question that surrounds this is whether all these techniques can add up to a movie worth watching.

    Shutter Island thankfully does, mostly because of its tight scripting by Laeta Kalogridis, who based it on the novel by Mystic River writer Dennis Lehane. Its easy to see what attracts Mr. Scorsese to a picture like this—examinations of insanity, outward expressions of inner pain, and simply the darkness that surrounds every frame—but often Mr. Scorsese lets his imagination run wild compared to his earlier films. Compared with his last film, the Oscar-winning The Departed, it seems Mr. Scorsese has thrown out his classical book of filmmaking for a completely new one. His camera twists and turns, he uses long shots as a cinematic device more than a narrative one, and his sense of foreboding has never been stronger.

    Maybe it is a stronger reflection of the narrative that unfolds through the film. Leonardo DiCaprio, in his fourth collaboration with Mr. Scorsese, stars as Teddy Daniels, an FBI Marshall in 1954, sent to a mental institution on a secluded island just off the Boston harbor. Along with his partner (Mark Ruffalo), Daniels is sent to find a missing patient (Emily Mortimer) at the institution. But how could someone ever escape such an island? As Daneils surveys the world of Shutter Island, especially the doctor in charge (Ben Kingsley), it seems something more is up. Is it related to the Nazis? Brainwashing by HUAC? Or is it something more sinister, related to Daniels own nightmares about his dead wife (Michelle Williams)?

    The trick to Shutter Island is whether you are going to go along for the ride or not. The film lacks any sort of subtlety—more than ever, Mr. Scorsese has filled his mise-en-scene with the most over-the-top of imagery. While most are used to his gritty realities in Raging Bull or Goodfellas, Mr. Scorsese, along with production designer Dante Ferretti, have turned ever notch up to the maximum. When rain falls, it crashes against the windows like rocks. When lights turn on, they blind the entire frame. When enraptured by darkness, Mr. Scorsese pulls on all the strings of fear. The problem that one might have with this idea is that Mr. Scorsese, more than ever, is making you aware of his filmmaking. His brash attack is so bold that it seems he is screaming for attention. But then again, Shutter Island’s narrative is not a mixture of subtlety. Its full of dreams and twisting nightmares, conspiracies and paranoid feelings. It leads you down one path, only to throw you in a different direction. New characters drop in and out—including a truly menacing small performance by Jackie Earle Haley—only bringing you down a third and fourth way, all in the efforts that you just won’t know what if happening when Mr. Scorsese finally pulls that final rug.

    The answer? A twist that will frustrate many, fascinate some, and leave many others attempting to re-read each scene. Its this sort of fun that Mr. Scorsese is attempting to have with Shutter Island—more than ever, he has made a film about cinema and storytelling. He has made it so obvious that he is exploring cinema, more than the insanity that appears on screen, that Mr. Scorsese wants to use his story as a device for his experiments of homage. Are we willing to go on that ride with Mr. Scorsese? I tried, and had fun with it—Mr. Scorsese wanted to make a B-Movie, something so self-aware and convolutedly constructed, and throw us down a rabbit hole. If anyone was getting tired of the old-Scorsese shtick, he has certainly thrown us all in a new direction.