Shutter Island, Scorsese's longed-for leap into low-down genre filmmaking, isn't the potboiler you expect — to its credit
Pulp Friction
by Bilge Ebiri
Based on Beantown crime novelist Dennis Lehane's best-selling 2003 thriller, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is being billed as a rare foray into genre for America's Greatest Living Director™ — which is a bit strange, since Scorsese's work has always had a wide streak of pulp running through it. Few climactic shootouts in American cinema can match the bloody finale of Taxi Driver, for example — and let's not forget the generous amounts of gore, violence, and suspense in films like Casino and Goodfellas. Nevertheless, here we are, with the recently Oscar-anointed Scorsese turning a schlocky page-turner into something that has to live up not only to his own vaunted reputation, but also to the studio bottom line and audience demands. It proves to be a difficult juggling act, though ultimately a rather successful one.
The setup is pretty simple. The year is 1954. Appearing literally out of the mist, Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo are two "duly-appointed Federal Mahhshalls" who arrive at the titular "mental institution ... (pregnant pause) ... for the criminally insane" to investigate the strange disappearance of a female patient with a murderous history. The gang's all here: Seemingly friendly doctors (Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, but of course) who are clearly hiding things from our heroes; a no-nonsense deputy warden (John Carroll Lynch, now of Zodiac fame, always a pleasure) who regards our heroes with suspicion from the beginning; wack-job patients who lose their shit at a moment's notice; spooky old ladies who make ominous "shhh" signs in slow-motion; sea-blasted cliffs that someone is sure to fall off; and a hurricane that could put The Perfect Storm out of business. Plus Leo's character, a temperamental and surprisingly fragile WWII vet named Teddy Daniels, is having nightmares about his dead wife (Michelle Williams) and about that time he helped liberate Dachau from the Nazis. Also, what's this business about a mysterious additional patient?
You've seen the trailers. And if you're the kind of person who likes to try figuring out twists in advance, you've probably already narrowed the possibilities to a couple of ways it can all go down. You're mostly right: For a supposedly twisty-turny thriller meant to keep us guessing, Shutter Island is quite predictable. But could that possibly be intentional? We can sense the director fighting with his material here: The audience presumably wants to be kept in the dark about the truth for as long as possible, but Scorsese seems intent on giving it away from the film's opening scenes.
But that's not such a bad thing. Indeed, the film's greatest failing turns out to be its secret strength, if that makes any sense. Because as we begin to realize what's going on, the film gains the contours of a tragedy — which, after all, has always been Scorsese's chosen genre. He's less interested in plot than in exploring his key themes of guilt, delusion, penance and redemption, while wowing us with cinematic trickery, some of it cribbed from his favorite filmmakers (Val Lewton, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick ... the list is pretty much endless).
The pitfall, of course, is that without some kind of narrative propulsion, stylized nightmares can get awfully tiresome — not unlike Scorsese's 1999 film Bringing Out the Dead, which seemed to think that Nicolas Cage and an ambulance were enough to hold together two hours of Avid-induced delirium. Shutter Island mostly — mostly — avoids that trap. There's enough going on here, and enough strong supporting performances from the likes of Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas, and Jackie Earle Haley, all in brief but pivotal roles, to keep us watching. But an audience expecting cheap thrills and a good old genre mindfuck may well find itself disappointed. Perhaps the best way to enjoy this film, though, is to guess the ending as quickly as possible. There's a way more interesting and powerful movie lurking beneath Shutter Island's pulp trappings.
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Shutter Island
Official Site: www.shutterisland.com
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Dennis Lehane and Laeta Kalogridis
Producer: Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max Von Sydow
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