Shutter Island

SHUTTER ISLAND, Martin Scorcese’s brilliant and unsettling film, captivated me from beginning to end.  Its story combined horror and suspense, its performances drew me in, and its flamboyant visual style never strayed from serving the tale to serving itself.

The film is set in 1954.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo come to Shutter Island, an Alcatraz – like mental facility for the violently insane.  They turn in their US Marshals’ badges and their sidearms at the gate, meet the warden, and commence their investigation of an inmate’s disappearance.  It seems like the setup for a delicious locked-room mystery, but the film won’t stop there.  The inmate in question had committed a crime so heinous that it can not exist in a ‘delicious mystery.’  Further, DiCaprio, the lead marshal, senses that something is off.  Why does the Warden and Chief Psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley, chillingly solicitous) insist on inserting himself into every phase of the investigation?  Why does everyone, patients and staff alike, seem off-kilter even for a mental institution?  What is it about this place that keeps him flashing back to The War and its horrors?  What’s going on here?

The film goes to dark, creepy, scary places.  And it stays there, knowing that dread and foreboding and that tickle at the back of your brain telling you to stay alert are far scarier and more effective than monsters and gallons of Kensington Gore.

The people in these places, people like the aforementioned DiCaprio, Ruffalo, and Kingsley; as well as Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley, among others; get under our skins, each in their own ways.  Not only are they fully realized human beings, but they seamlessly advance the story, build dread, and even give us the feeling that what seams they may show are actually faces to meet the people that they meet.  When you’re Martin Scorsese, these are the kinds of actors with whom you get to work.

While Scorsese gets the best from his performers, he pays considerable attention to his cinematographer, editor, designers, and artists.  This work feels like that of a master of his art, delighting in his ability to create worlds both fanciful and pedestrian.  From the brilliant juxtaposition of past and present to the contrasts in dress, demeanor, and even worlds of different characters, to Shutter Island itself, the film works in bold, assured strokes, delighting in storytelling and its medium, confident that we will stay for the whole ride.  I saw this film on my basement enormovision, but I wish I’d done better: I wish I’d seen it on the big screen.

For SHUTTER ISLAND is successful in every way.  I can’t wait to see it again.