Martin Scorcese’s newest movie begins in 1954 on a tugboat carrying US Marshal Teddy Daniels, played by Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, The Departed) to Shutter Island, a small island off the coast of Boston and home to a renowned high-security mental institution. A dangerous female patient, Rachel, has escaped and is hiding somewhere on the island.?Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule, played by Mark Ruffalo (In The Cut, Zodiac) have been assigned to track her down. Soon after they arrive, a wild storm erupts trapping the Marshals on the island and it soon becomes evident to Daniels that Shutter Island is not what it appears to be.
As the story progresses, it becomes harder for Daniels, and the viewer, to know who to trust. Dr. Cawley, played by Ben Kingsley, (Ghandi, The Love Guru) runs the institution and is a radical proponent of what was then “new” medicine – espousing group therapy and medication instead of lobotomies.
But Daniels doesn’t buy it for one second. From the moment he drives onto the eerie grounds of Shutter Island’s mental wards he begins flashing back to his time as a soldier in WWII and liberator of Dachau – and they get worse when he finds out that the other head doctor is German.
Half of the movie consists of Daniels’ wild hallucinations, dream sequences and the devil is in the details here. Daniels said his wife died in a fire, but in his dream she’s burning in their home, bleeding from her gut and melting water. Snow falls on emaciated, frozen corpses in Dachau, but a remarkably well-preserved child rises from the pile to say, “You should have saved us.” Each sequence and conversation is filled with visual and verbal cues foreshadowing a twist in the film’s plot.
Daniels comes to believe that Shutter Island is part of a vast government conspiracy using mentally handicapped and “insane” people as guinea pigs for their mind control experiments. He took the assignment to both expose the place for what it is and to investigate the existence of a certain inmate named “Laeddis” who he thinks is responsible for Dolores’ death. The uncertainty of the movie culminates in a clever twist just before the big reveal when Daniels finally finds Rachel hiding in a cave. Patricia Clarkson (Good Night and Good Luck, Dogville) delivers a performance so compelling that her word alone is enough to keep Daniels and the audience resisting and second-guessing the Deus ex Machina of an ending.
This movie is worth the ticket price just for the cinematography. Scorsese uses dramatic, high contrast period colors – especially the yellows, oranges and reds in the dream sequences with Daniels deceased wife Dolores, played by Michelle Williams, (Brokeback Mountain, Dick) and in the murky greys, beiges and greens in and around the institution. It’s an admiring nod to fifties film noir and it works well for the piece – the high contrast play of light on DiCaprios’ face carves deep, jagged shadows into his usually boyish visage, allowing him to look more like the hard-boiled and haunted cop he plays. The soundtrack is also high-contrast melodrama, consisting of more brass and bass with less keening strings and at times is reminiscent of the Jaws theme.
My weird preferences aside, Shutter Island is a very good film and is highly recommended to fans of horror, suspense, psychological thrillers and Film Noir enthusiasts. Even if you’re not a fan of those genres, it’s a good night at the theatre.
Visuals: A
Music: A
Acting: A
Story: B-
Hilarity level of DiCaprios’ “Boston” accent: A+
Overall: B+