starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams
Scorsese’s new mystery movie may be missing a little something… unfortunately, that something happens to be mystery. To be clear, this movie is by no means a bad one, but with Scorsese, we have come to expect a certain standard. So this review is subject to the esteemed collection of a great modern-day auteur. Hey, he can’t win it all, but despite this semi-negative review, you should see it anyway. But first is first. Synopsis:
High style and high drama are what characterizes Shutter Island, set in the 1950s starring Leonardo DiCaprio as U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels, Mark Ruffalo as Chuck, his right-hand man, and Ben Kingsley as a suspicious Dr. Crawley, who cares for the nation’s most dangerous mentally unstable patients, housed in facilities on this island. Daniels is hell-bent to solve a curious case of the island institution’s missing patient, especially since he believes solving it is a missing link to explaining the death of his own wife years earlier.
The acting talent is there, but this thriller is seriously lacking in character. Shutter Island simply isn’t as driven by personality as some of Scorsese’s best (and even worst, for that matter) films. The dialogue is 1950s true-to-the-era cool and aims to be purposely stereotypical, but caring about the plight of Daniels is a stretch. Equally as difficult is investing trust in Chuck (Ruffalo) and Crawley (Kingsley). The audience’ logic stays divided for a bit too long.
Kudos to DiCaprio, Ruffalo, and a fantastic Kingsley, who added a perfect dose of peculiar to his character. Each actor helped along a seemingly weak script. However, there’s only so much they can do; it won’t be a career-highlighting role for anyone. Instead, the lack of character development leaves the audience hoping to cling onto an engaging story. Sadly, that doesn’t work too well either. Even though mystery and suspense are a perfect pair, Scorsese only gets one of these right. The mystery evaporates early on, but leaves the audience with a taste of impending suspense.
The story picks up here and there since the suspense is rich and tense, but sometimes the intensity of a scene gets diluted with too much dialogue. The redeeming quality of this movie is its style. You have to give Scorsese credit… considering a great director can be easily defined by watching the physical elements of a movie reflect, reinforce and comment on the narrative.
This can be seen all over the movie, which is basically homage to the master of suspense himself, Hitchcock. In his committed decision to play up style, he uses high and low key lighting a la film noir to heighten suspense and blur the audience’s understanding of Daniels life. From the get-go, we question the protagonist’s motives and truth vs. reality (unfortunately, this is where we lose the mystery).
The film purist within Scorsese to stick with the look, feel and film technology of the times also adds some charm on screen. His deliberate use of fake revolving backdrops, a striking retro set and harsh color scheme displays his attention to detail. It feels like you could spend a good bit of time yourself poking through all the details that make Island seem like an impossible labyrinth to crawl out of. The chilling soundtrack also adds some good drama. The film aims to visually trap you, and it succeeds.
In the end, he misses out on making a classic by ignoring his strength of character development and the vital need for a tight plot to make a good mystery, but his stylistic touches remind us why we still love him.
Now, forget what you just read. Upon viewing the film, read the entry below, and let me give you a few reasons that will actually make you appreciate this movie better than you thought you did:
Shutter Island, visuals in depth (Spoiler Alert)
This is a little testament on why you should, at this point, only compare Scorsese to Scorsese, a filmmaker who sets himself as a class apart anyway… he’s earned it.
Scorsese intuitively uses a downward motif in this movie. There are many scenes that include hard-falling rain, falling paper, falling ashes, even trees falling and crashing to the ground. To emphasize this motif, many of the camera angles are set up from a perspective wither looking down from a great height, or looking up from downward angle. He is subconsciously hinting to viewers that things are probably never going to look up for Daniels right from the beginning.
The cinematography gives way to many deep, dark contrasts, and sometimes blinding whites. This is meant to question how well you actually know DiCaprio’s character. Are those dark corners hiding a few secrets? When he washes out a scene with intense whites, are we starting to see the truth about his character? The lighting is begging the question, how much do we really know? How well do you know these characters? The harsh color story gives off the feeling of an uncomfortable chill; it’s a little ragged and tired.
Vertical and horizontal lines are used all over the set, to reinforce a labyrinth-like feel to Shutter Island. Jail bars, metal staircases criss-crossing each other, tall trees, long corridors… the list goes on. The audience gets the feeling that it may not be possible for Daniels to find his way out. That becomes one of the main struggles. The whole island, surrounded by water with only one exit, feels like a giant prison cell.
Watching the movie on mute may even give you enough hints about the plot visually. You get the feeling that perhaps the mystery in this movie was never supposed to be too tight. This brings up another visual (and structural narrative) theme of this movie… to celebrate the mystery movie making of Alfred Hitchcock.
The trick to Hitchcock’s success was never a clever ending, but by the way he used his characters and the boundaries that were created by the narrative of the mystery. Sometimes the plot wasn’t even so important and often, it was ridiculous. He was a master of binding mystery so close to his characters, who he relied on to push the story along. By the end of a Hitchcock movie, the twist usually wasn’t even important anymore. The audience by then is more invested in their characters.
Scorsese tries to emulate this, but falls short because of two things. First, he does not set up the suspense to go deep enough. Second, and more importantly, his greater challenge was to show more, not tell as much and rely on his characters to sell the mystery. Still, its a great attempt. Many have often tried to copy Hitchcock, and never even came this close.
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