Shutter Island

Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s first feature film since The Departed (2006), keeps true to a central theme of his work – a loner must retain his wits to survive in a brutish world that brings out the darkest side of everyone around him. But the film also experiments with story in unexpected and satisfying ways. What is different about Shutter Island is the internal nature of the journey made by Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and how Scorsese orchestrates the narrative as it moves toward the inevitable revelation of “what is really happening."

From the first shot of the film - a large mysterious fogbank slowly reveals the shape of a small ferryboat - we enter a world balanced between the physical beauty of the rocky Massachusetts coastline and the institutional life of a military-style fortress. Much of Shutter Island is shot in a noir low-key style, and every frame is carefully composed. It is a dark-themed but beautiful film, shot by Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, Casino, Natural Born Killers) with an elegance and efficiency of camera movement and composition that is emblematic of his work. The camera in the first half of the film seems in continuous and fluid motion, setting up an effective contrast to the more tightly edited sequences built around Teddy’s descent into the inner workings of the island.

Shutter Island begins as an investigation – Teddy, a U.S. Marshal, arrives on the island with a new partner (Mark Ruffalo) to help find a dangerous patient who has mysteriously disappeared. Her disappearance is inexplicable, and we learn quickly that Teddy has his own issues that erupt in dream (or nightmare) fashion, threatening to unnerve him and derail his progress.

There is a surrealist aspect to Teddy’s experience that effectively supports both the narrative and style – much of his reality is expressed in an internal world that springs from what seem to be the darkest and most influential events in his life. Although set in 1954, Teddy keeps returning to his experience helping to liberate the Dachau concentration camp, reliving the suffering of inmates staring silently through eyes marked by death.  The Dachau flashbacks include a scene of violence perpetrated by the American liberators – and soon begin to intermingle in a disturbing way with other aspects of his past.

The cinematography of the flashbacks is extraordinary. The Nazi sequences are shot in two distinct ways that use color to support the narrative. The death camp exteriors are muted, the color toned down to suggest the emotionally crushing experience of the liberators. At the camp headquarters, where Teddy watches the slow painful suicide of the Nazi commandant, the images have richer hues, made dreamlike by the roomful of colorful papers that float around the soldiers, tossed into the air as part of their mission.

Ben Kingsley plays Dr. Cawley, the hospital director, with just the right touch of gravity and potentially dark intentions. Although we are unsure for much of the film of his allegiances, there is never a doubt about the depth of his passion for the work that goes on at the asylum. Max Von Sydow is perfect as the suspiciously Nazi-like department chief, ready to lobotomize at a moment’s notice. Although DiCaprio carries the film with an intense and disturbing performance, the confusion his character struggles with makes his role feel a bit diffused at times – the result of the narrative complexity that Scorsese, Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), and Dennis Lehane (novel) worked so hard to achieve. We learn early from Teddy that his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) died in a fire that he feels guilty about. Soon she appears in a series of visions that are rich in surrealist/dream imagery – her inexplicable appearance though long-dead, cigarette smoke that moves backward, sudden shifts from a ghost-quiet interior to a waterfront, warnings from the grave that seem to guide Teddy forward with secret information.  Although she seems at first to be only a messenger, her importance becomes more intertwined with his destiny as the story unfolds.

The film falters when Teddy’s search is transformed into expositional scenes that are dialogue driven - one in the middle of the film when Teddy and Chuck are forced by a fierce windstorm into a small mausoleum and another between Teddy and Rachel (Patricia Clarkson), the escaped patient, in a small cave recently evacuated by an army of rats. Though each scene brings the momentum of the narrative to a crawl, they also represent important turning points, providing Teddy with seemingly valuable information in his quest to figure out his own life.

Scorsese is a master of film history and has loaded Shutter Island with important influences: the stifling environment and oppressed patients of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the cold and formal architectural symmetry of The Shining, the internal character dynamics of The Fight Club. With his writers he has consciously walked a fine line – the technique of revealing/withholding information as the narrative unfolds, central to the success of the film, will determine in large part whether viewers enjoy the film or not. Happily, for those who wish to, it is possible to step back through the film in a Sixth Sense manner, rebuilding the story from a new perspective. And the ride itself is stylish, suspenseful, and a lot of fun.

                                    Thomas W. Campbell