A movie review by: Patient 0616
SHUTTER ISLAND is one heck of a movie that left my mouth hanging open until the credits rolled. As a lover of psychological films, this one totally met my expectations and I think it went beyond. I swear, this flick actually drove me crazy thinking about how it will end. Then I felt myself feeling like an idiot trying to figure out what comes next because I hardly get it right. Martin Scorsese, the director of this film really gave us another grand masterpiece, not to mention the awesome and moving performance of Leonardo Dicaprio.
Leonardo Dicaprio plays US Marshal Teddy Daniels, sent to investigate an escape at a remote island mental facility. Ashecliffe is a maximum security insane asylum where the nation’s most violent, dangerous, and often hopeless cases are sent. He arrives on the ferry with his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) and, though still suffering the ill-effects of seasickness, immediately gets to work looking for the lost prisoner. Daniels may, however, be interested in more than just a lost prisoner and haunted by the memories of a past tragedy he stalks Ashecliffe’s grounds, fighting his way through an uncooperative staff, looking for answers.
But is the staff really uncooperative? Ben Kingsley is sympathetic and kind as Ashecliffe’s head Dr. Cawley. The man we see in front of us seems genuinely driven to help the people he’s been charged with. He smiles and comforts even as Teddy’s investigation starts to point to something darker and more mysterious. Kingsley is just one of Shutter Island’s captivating contradictions in a world where everything seems lost in shades of foggy gray.
Maybe it’s not a man who’s the real danger. At times it seems as though nature itself is against Teddy. The island is almost permanently shrouded in an ominous, concealing mist. The hospital itself is a contradiction: at times dark and creepy place full of leaks and the screams of the damned, at others a clean, professional facility full of people who want to help. Scorsese uses his mastery of visual style to full effect, playing with even the most mundane trappings of a scene in creating an atmosphere that hints at something else beneath the surface. Just like what he did with The Gangs of New York but darker and more severe. Cigarette smoke wafts through the air, obscuring a face and then clearing away as the individual reveals something important. Rain pounds against the windows while lightning flashes electrify a room as if Teddy is being fried from the inside out. Shutter Island is full of masterful, subtle touches which all point to something else, but which you’ll easily dismiss until later when it all makes sense. Those easy to miss subtleties linger in your subconscious and hang around until you need them. Eventually it all fits together into one, unexpected, whole. Everything in this movie defines the word masterpiece.
DiCaprio’s performance is a critical part of that whole and like so much in the movie, it doesn’t all pay off until the credits roll and Scorsese closes the book on his story. In doing so he leaves us with all the answers we need, but without answering all of our questions.Pretty clever huh?
But of course, without the genius and the "madness" of the writer of the book, Dennis Lehane, this movie will not be a hit. Shutter Island is definitely my favorite Scorsese movie ever.
So next time you go looking for your next favorite psychological thriller film, check out SHUTTER ISLAND and you'll never look again.
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