Shutter Island (***½)
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Max von Sydow, Jacky Earle Haley, Particia Clarkson, Elias Koteas, John Carroll Lynch
Seen: March 12th 2010
***½ Out of ****
In the hands of any other generic director, Shutter Island might not have been a great movie, but Martin Scorsese weaves with a deft touch, and the result is an exhilarating and very atmospheric thriller. The trailers gave a stronger idea of the possible creepy and supernatural, but Shutter Island eventually plays out as a very good thriller with its occasional frightful moments.
US Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) is on his way to Shutter Island, home to Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane. On the boat to Shutter Island he gets acquainted with his new partner, Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) while vomiting his lungs out from seasickness. They are headed for Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient, one Rachel Solando (Mortimer), a highly intelligent woman who drowned her three children and sees the mental hospital as her neighbourhood, the orderlies being milkmen and postal officers and such. Things seem to become slightly strange as the case does not make a whole lot of sense. Not for one minute are you absolutely sure who to believe or what supposed reality to side with as a baseline for the movie. In one scene a woman Teddy and Chuck interviews asks for water, but when she “picks up” the glass, she is holding only empty air, while from that she still slams an empty glass down on the table – only for the next camera angle to show the glass half-full: all elements in creating uncertainty in the viewer’s mind.
The movie is wonderfully atmospheric, and doesn’t for one minute truly allow the viewer a reprieve from feeling that strangeness is about to transpire. The music is constantly building up to something, and just as constantly that pent-up tension is broken by some small and almost ridiculous event leading to the next big event. The truth of the situation is ambiguously presented and only the final moment of the film does not give you as viewer the prerogative to decide what is actually going on.
Leonardo DiCaprio is his usual brilliant self as a legendary (of sorts) US Marshall mourning the loss of his wife Dolores (Williams), who died of smoke inhalation when his home was burnt down by another man he is still searching for, Andrew Laeddis (Koteas). Michelle Williams as Marshall Daniel’s hallucinated wife is wholly convincing as his otherworldly guiding voice, while Emily Mortimer is suitably sweet/unsettling as Rachel Solando. Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow manage to keep the viewer guessing as to their intent for the entire movie as the main psychiatrists on the island, Doctors John Cawley and Jeremiah Naeringh – both seemingly filled with good intendions while also being ostensibly elusive antagonists to DiCaprio’s Teddy. The always impressive and brilliant Jackie Earle Haley has a small but integral role as George Noyce, a patient at Ashecliffe with more than just a passing connection to Teddy Daniels.
Shutter Island is wonderfully atmospheric and eerily disturbing (in a good way), and keeps the viewer guessing all along. Martin Scorsese lifts this story out of the run-of-the-mill class of thrillers this might so easily have become a part of and even brings in an element so big as this statement by one character: “I’d rather die as a good man than live as a monster”. Shutter Island is most definitely a success, and will keep everyone guessing, and even though I correctly suspected some elements of the twist at the end by the halfway mark, the full disclosure will still knock you out of the park.
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