‘Shutter Island’ is full of promise and it doesn’t fail in the delivery

 

Editor’s note: Peter Lewis has agreed to use whatever it is you call his writing style to provide some measure of analysis to those folks who still go to a theater to see a movie. Enjoy.

review by Peter Lewis

From the outside looking in, Shutter Island is full of promise. The story comes from a novel by the rightly acclaimed Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River) and was shot by Martin Scorsese, one of the great American directors. Toss in the best actor of the last 15 years or so, Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio, and you have a pretty heady combination.

Yet this promise was distinctly counterbalanced by the knowledge that Shutter Island was the only movie to open nationwide this past weekend. Foresight is needed for that orchestration. So while I hoped for good things, there was a definite nervousness walking into the theater. I hoped that the foresight was genuine and not born from a lack of confidence in the finished product. Whatever the true origins of the release date decision, the finished product was quite good (Like much of Lehane’s work, the film offers a substantial twist, so I hesitate to delve to deeply into any details. I don’t want to unintentionally tip the cardsharp’s hand before that hand is played out).

The dichotomy of emotion I felt leading up to the film was played out on screen. The film is masterly atmospheric. There was a constant tug between power and poetic restraint. The prior played out like a beating in “Goodfellas,” while the latter was art house; it was masterfully elegiac.

As the boat delivering U.S. Marshal, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio), approaches the island in question, the music pulsates loudly. With regular intervals it hammers around you, instilling a sense of true dread. Whatever is coming, you know it can’t be good.

Yet, while much of the musical choice was overbearing, there were snatches of elegant grace. Robbie Robertson (of The Band fame) occasionally wielded a nice counterbalance. Delicate snippets of Mahler are sprinkled into the film, inciting crippling flashes of the past in Daniels’s head.

One of the more compelling aspects of the film is the utter mysteriousness of the plot. Not that much normalcy could really occur on a penal island for the violently insane, but from the outset, one quickly deduces that something is amiss. Something insidious is occurring on the storm tossed harbor island. Everyone seems to have something to hide. The fear is driving and palpable.

This sense is driven by details. There are small moments that fill out the general ambiance of the film. The scars from a failed suicide on the neck of an inmate, the furtive and fearful glances of an obvious conspirator. Not minutiae, but concerted care. It is all spaced out with great effort by Scorsese.

At one point in the film, Teddy is badgered by the head warden about violence. The warden claimed that violence was the great arbiter of the world. It was the only thing that truly mattered. Teddy, somewhat meekly, countered that the moral order was the greater of the two. Just as the moral order all too often falls to the hand of force, Teddy’s suggestion was quickly met with loud derision by the warden. These competing concepts were played out through the movie, most importantly on the island’s patients themselves.

What is built through this counterbalanced melange is a great, shape-shifting dramatic thriller. One becomes invested in Teddy Daniels, tied up in the manic incredulity of DiCaprio’s eyes. They plainly illustrate the looming potentialities of the Island’s horrors. As the web of mystery and confusion becomes unraveled, this investment of hope becomes even more desperate. It becomes less about his life and more about the survival of his existence.

Like much of the film, the closing scene was layered and expertly juxtaposed. Scorsese smoothly lays out the abdication of the moral order to the hands of violence. He adeptly captures the hopelessness of an irreparably broken existence: the ferocity of survival giving way to tragic resignation.

• Shutter Island is playing at the Carmike 14 and the Malco Cinema 12 in Fort Smith, and the Malco Van Buren Cinema. Link here for time and ticket info.

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