day 51 - Shutter Island

OK film fans, tonight I'd like to talk about a new film from an American master, director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese's career is phenomenal and has placed him in the pantheon of directors, standing shoulder to shoulder with greats like John Ford, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman and Francois Truffaut. All of the masters have films for which they are famous, a film that best represents their skills. But even the best film directors do not make a masterpiece on every outing. The Departed, the film for which Scorsese won an Oscar, is a very good film but I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who considers it his best work. But the thing about great film directors that's most intriguing is their ability to visually tell a story, regardless of the genre, theme or era.

Shutter Island is the latest gift to film lovers from Scorsese. It is an ominous, brooding film noir inspired tale of fear and grief, less horror film than it is an unrelenting examination of suspense through mystery. This is Marty in Vertigo mode and as such we explore the fact that there are worse things awaiting in the dark than the bogeyman or a masked stalker with a machete. Sometimes the worst thing in the shadows and darkness is what lies hidden in our own mind.

It is 1954 and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (Scorsese's current muse Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (the engaging Mark Ruffalo) are on a ferry heading towards a remote and foreboding island off Boston where a Civil War-era fort has been converted into a prison/hospital for the criminally insane. It takes only the worst patients, those no other site can handle, and one such patient, a woman who killed her own children, is missing. Scorsese sets the tone immediately with the first notes of the haunting soundtrack. Our first glimpse of the island is from the ferry carrying the Marshals, emerging from sea level fog with a single small dock before us, all other entry points of the island precluded by sheer cliffs and jagged rocks in the waters below. The island itself screams a warning to all approaching.

The numerous guards Teddy and Chuck meet upon arrival are not exactly courteous and there is something off about Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch). The staff they meet follow suit, seemingly taking their cues from suspiciously cordial Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). The disappearance of Rachel Solando, our aforementioned murderer, is even more odd. She has gone missing from a locked room with bars on the window. In a locked building surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence. On an island. And, as Chuck points out, without any shoes. Oh yeah, there's also a near hurricane level storm approaching as well. It seems unusual the Marshals would be assigned to this case, but since everything else on the island seems unusual, we barely notice.

As their search continues the Marshals meet the calm but menacing Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), a man whose intentions appear anything but forthright. In the verbal sparring between he and Teddy we learn of Teddy's service in WW II, were he was part of the liberation of a Nazi death camp. We also learn that Dr. Naehring is not an American but a recent immigrant of Germany. It is here that Scorsese the master begins to reveal the layers within Teddy and the film noir influences our hero imparts. Teddy is a flawed hero (as all film noir heroes are), subject to the post traumatic influences of his war experiences and, as we also learn, the death of his wife in a suspicious fire. Teddy is struggling with demons before he ever sets foot on the island and it seems he is destined to uncover more as his search for the truth continues. Another distinction arises during the scene; the Marshals are not violent men, but rather men of violence. It's an important distinction that lies at the heart of the film.

I won't say anymore about the story, it is after all a mystery film. Shutter Island is the work of a true master and Scorsese fills the screen with thrilling visuals and menacing sounds. I have to take a moment and discuss the use of music in this film. It is a soundtrack which bears the distinction of evoking a sinister tone without becoming memorable. Scorsese uses source music as important tool, Gustav Mahler's Quartet for Strings and Piano in A minor is quite disturbing, from the first time we hear it to the moments when Scorsese chooses to repeat it for emphasis. But despite its overall success as an integral part of creating suspense, it is sublime and no more memorable than its adjoining parts. I find it unusual and perplexing for a soundtrack to work so successfully onscreen that you don't recall its presence. I can't recall of another soundtrack having this effect, but it is brilliant nonetheless.

Shutter Island is a very good film by a modern master using the full measure of his talents. The screenplay, an adaptation of a novel by Dennis Lehane, provides Scorsese an opportunity to push himself outside of his comfort zone (gangsters and lowlifes) and play with film technique in way not seen since the underappreciated The Age of Innocence. While this may not be a masterpiece and to be sure it feels like there are some false notes, primarily in the length of scenes that add to the layers but if removed may not have been noticed, but it is a glorious piece of film which I imagine will only improve with additional viewings. I can say tonight that I am already planning on another trip to Shutter Island, both for another glimpse of a master's brushstrokes and because of Teddy's haunting question. "Is is better to live as a monster or die as a good man?"