It's nice to know that even after a long-awaited Oscar—even after being given carte blanche to do whatever he wants by major studios, even after being named the greatest filmmaker to ever live by every magazine that gives out such a designation—Martin Scorsese is still, at heart, a B-movie director. Everything about his flashy colors, his impact cuts, and his sharp angles has always owed as much to Roger Corman double bills as they did to the French New Wave, and that has never been as evident as it is in Shutter Island, a film that would feel right at home at a drive-in on a Saturday afternoon, were those still commonplace. He may be the most respected director in the world, but he's still a guy who loves playing cops and robbers.
"Teddy" Daniels is a man's police officer: he's gruff, haunted by numerous past traumas (the overkill in this respect almost suggests a bit of parody on Scorsese's part), and hostile towards anything that even resembles weakness or compassion for the guilty; which is just about everybody, at least to Teddy. Along with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), Daniels heads out to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient at the psychiatric ward there. A ward, we are repeatedly told… for the criminally insane. Once he gets there, he is greeted with open hands but closed mouths on the parts of Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), who seem to be totally comfortable with the presence of the marshals, so long as they don't investigate anything beyond what they are specifically there to investigate. Edwards, being the two-fisted type, decides that he's going to take matters into his own hands, and begins to unravel a vast conspiracy there.
From the opening scene on a boat approaching the misty Shutter Island, a scene which deliberately recalls King Kong, Scorsese makes it clear exactly what kind of movie this is going to be. In case there was any ambiguity, Daniels then informs us that we are going to a mental hospital… for the criminally insane. Scorsese stops short of making DiCaprio turn to the camera, with Scorsese zooming in dramatically, while he delivers this line, but it clearly takes a Herculean act of restraint on his part. This film is so full of dangling chains, half-lit doorways, and over baked musical cues that you wish that he'd totally let the dog off the leash and go nuts (you can't help but wonder what would happen if De Palma had done this film instead of The Black Dahlia, and vice versa). He's certainly given ample resources to do so: the cinematography by Robert Richardson has all the pulpy vibrance that you would want it to, and the score by Robbie Robertson is every bit as moody and evocative as any horror score, and it is most certainly that; the music to this and Halloween could be swapped and none would be the wiser. And for their parts, the actors do just fine. DiCaprio conveys all of the brawny paranoia that anyone featured on the cover of Tiger Beat ever could, and Michelle Williams (as his dead wife) is appropriately ethereal, communicating mute horror through her fairly accurate Boston accent.
The problem, however, is that Scorsese never quite lets that Oscar out of view. Every time that the film threatens to become enjoyable, he cuts back to Edwards liberating the Dachau concentration camp, looking out on rows of starved, emaciated corpses. There are numerous attempts to draw parallels between that situation and this, but none of them really take. As a result, the film ends up feeling both over and under done; under because it's not quite sure what movie it really wants to be, but over because whatever it is, it's going to do it as forcefully as it possibly can. More than once, I was reminded of Peter Jackson's King Kong, another film by a recent Oscar winner that was filled with technical brilliance but managed to put some reasonably respectable dialogue scenes alongside cries that they "get Jimmy out of here" (which I'm still convinced was a big joke on Jackson's part).
Recently, Scorsese stated that he's glad that he didn't win an Oscar until later in his career, because it would have affected the kinds of films that he made. Having watched this, it's not hard to see what he was talking about. Now that he's "the greatest living film maker," he has expectations to live up to, and he certainly shouldn't be seen making trashy horror films. That's not to say that Shutter Island isn't a horror film, because it is; it's just never free to act out in the way you really want it to.
"Shutter Island" opens February 19, 2010 and is rated R. Horror, Mystery, Thriller. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), Dennis Lehane (novel). Starring Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max Von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson.
