Shutter Island

While I don’t feel it was for his most deserving film, I am glad that Martin Scorsese finally won his Oscar for “The Departed.” Not because it was really a lifetime achievement award that said, “Sorry about ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘The King of Comedy,’ (my personal favorite) and ‘Goodfellas.’” It is because now with it out of the way he can just go back to making movies without the pretense of trying to win an Academy Award. While I enjoyed “Gangs of New York,” “The Aviator,” and “The Departed,” there was a sense with all three that he was caring a little too much about a little golden statue. “Shutter Island” isn’t going to win him any awards but he has made one heck of an entertaining thriller.
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are investigating the disappearance of a woman named Rachel Solando from the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane in 1954. As the head psychiatrist Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) explains, “It is as though she had evaporated. Right through the walls.” From the very start “Shutter Island” is brimming with a foreboding atmosphere. Scorsese seems to be having fun just spinning a yarn. The cinematography, costumes, dialogue, and music are all there to remind us we’re watching a movie and to just surrender to the storytelling. He maintains this feel throughout its 138 minutes which actually fly by.
Teddy and Chuck have a hard time believing that Rachel Solando, a woman in Ashecliffe for drowning her three children, could have just disappeared as Cawley is claiming. The facility’s location on a remote island and the brewing hurricane suggest that even with Rachel getting out of her cell it’s unlikely she’s still alive. It also keeps the Marshals on Shutter Island even as they desperately want to escape, sensing a sinister plot.
As “Shutter Island” is a film full of surprises that unfold not as shocks but as logical progressions in its story I won’t say anything more about that. I will say though that Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis have adapted Dennis Lehane’s novel into something thoroughly engrossing and entertaining. That said, “Shutter Island” is hardly a happy film. Flashbacks to Nazi death camps and the senseless murders of children figure heavily into it. Still, it’s not quite as monumentally depressing as “Mystic River” (also based on a Lehane novel).
One of the elements I most appreciated about what Scorsese does here is that he uses visual effects in ways that are not only striking, but also serve to tell the story. Something James Cameron knew how to do when he made “Terminator 2” but recently forgot. The effects are a part of the emotional impact.
“Shutter Island” isn’t Oscar bait but it’s very much the movie I wanted it to be. I think most movie fans will feel the same way. 8.5/10.