Blogorium Review: Shutter Island

At the outset, I'd like to pose the following question about Martin Scorsese, because I'm genuinely curious:

Which of his films qualify as "lesser works"?

I ask, in part, because many of the reviews for Shutter Island that I saw early used that very terminology as a means of "preparing" cinephiles to be disappointed in some way, but what does it really mean? We can take the obvious films (Cape Fear, The King of Comedy, and New York, New York are the usual punching bags) out of the way, and where do you go from there? Does that imply his non-gangster films are the lesser ones? The films that aren't crime dramas?

But wait, I remember people calling Casino "lesser Scorsese", and the same for The Gangs of New York. Bringing Out the Dead gets slapped with that a lot, but nobody ever seems to talk about Kundun or The Age of Innocence at all, so are they "lesser works"? Boxcar Bertha? Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore? After Hours? The Color of Money? But wait, The Color of Money revived his career and was a big hit for Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. After Hours is being taught alongside Taxi Driver as neo-noir. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore figures prominently in almost every article about Kris Kristofferson and Ellen Burstyn, who won an Oscar for the film (Diane Ladd was also nominated). I'm a little fuzzy here.

Truthfully, there's some debate now about how "lesser" Cape Fear is, and Shutter Island is going to contribute to that discussion, because both films are exercises for Scorsese in making a particular style of film. If Cape Fear was his modernized take on the black and white thriller, then Shutter Island is Scorsese working period, this time on the technicolor cinerama films of the 1950s. Somehow it seems utterly appropriate that Criterion would release Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life within months of Shutter Island coming to theatres.

Ah, but I digress; Let's get to the film proper, shall we?

Federal Marshalls Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive at Shutter Island - a maximum security mental institution off the coast of Massachusetts - during the fall of 1954* to help find a patient who mysteriously disappeared from her room. When they arrive at the institution, they find very little assistance from Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) or his associate Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), or from much of the staff or guards. Daniels is suffering from terrible migraines and dreams of liberating Dachau, which already have him on edge, but indicators that there may be a larger conspiracy at Shutter Island send him to the edge of sanity - in exactly the last place you would want to be at that point.

Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone), Shutter Island is a throwback to B-movies of the 1950s. It could have been a Samuel Fuller film, but Scorsese opts instead to shoot it like a Douglas Sirk picture in Cinemascope: full of rich colors framed in the widest possible sense. Shutter Island is a film about the internal world rendered in epic proportions, particularly anything having to do with the cliffs that surround the island or the lighthouse that's so important to Daniels. Even on the ferry ride to Shutter Island at the beginning, the vivid oranges and purples of the sky seem to extend in every direction around Daniels and Auhe, swallowing them up. The juxtaposition of story and visual style, appropriately, tends to overwhelm the viewer.

But it is the story that's important. The mystery of what happened to Rachel Solando, the "missing" patient who may have never existed in the first place, is really just an opportunity for Daniels to get to the island. There's a chance that Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), a pyromaniac responsible for Teddy's wife Delores (Michelle Williams) is in Ward C (a Civil War bunker remade as the "worst of the worst" ward), and Daniels want to confront him. The more Daniels searches, the more possible it becomes that a vast conspiracy involving neurological tests and brainwashing is happening to the patients, and even in his fragile mental state, Daniels pushes forward to follow the clues.

I think people are beating up on Shutter Island because of the "twist", which is not so much a twist as a slow reveal. There are plenty of clues from the first frame that all is not right for Agent Daniels, from the heightened colors of the sky to the way his coat looks just a little too big. Little things don't add up in the film as Daniels and Chuck investigate the missing patient, both for them, but also for the audience. Props disappear and re-appear, statements and behavior on the part of staff and prisoners is inconsistent, and Daniels' dreams point to something we can't quite pinpoint in his back story that seems very important.

Of course, if you're really paying attention, the scene with George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley) spells it all out. It's right there in the middle of the movie - exactly what Dr. Cawley says at the end. Scorsese is just clever enough to make you doubt that's what you heard. Shutter Island is, in fact, very good at hiding the truth in plain sight; the film gives you all of the pieces to the puzzle - save for one pretty important part - but is designed in such a way that you doubt their reliability along with everything else Teddy discovers.

Then again, the "twist" itself isn't really what makes Shutter Island such a great movie. Yes, the construction of the mystery and its payoff are impressive, but it's what happens afterward that's the real kicker. Without spoiling anything (and don't let anyone tell you what happens, that's for your second viewing) Shutter Island is an emotional sucker-punch in its last ten minutes or so, leading up to Teddy's final line, one that's both on the nose for this film but also devastating for his character's arc. Martin Scorsese takes the B-Movie model and hooks it on to something deeply affective for audiences. You don't just leave Shutter Island when it ends; the film sticks with you and digs into your psyche.

And on that note, I must ask again what it is that makes this film a "lesser Scorsese", because so far the only argument I've heard in that term's favor is that "lesser Scorsese is still better than most movies" as though that makes it okay. I found nothing to be "lesser" about Shutter Island, but I've certainly talked to a lot of people who would have seen the movie had that term not been attached before it came out.


* somebody please double check me on this one. I know the year is correct, but because I have not many options to watch it again, I'm not positive of the time of year.