What happens when Martin Scorsese makes a genre film? The result is Shutter Island, an overstuffed effort that adds more themes and capital-I Importance to Dennis Lehane's pulpy shocker of a book than the material can bear. Where the novel was a fast ride through two horrific days on a rain-swept Massachusetts island, the film is determined to be something more. Scorsese has made a horror film where modernity of the late-20th century variety is the monster licking its lips in the wings.
Part of what must have attracted Scorsese to this material was the chance to work with Leonardo DiCaprio again. In addition to making it easier for Scorsese to get films made DiCaprio can be counted on for an unshowy lead performance. He doesn't disappoint here in the role of U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, called to dank Shutter Island in 1954 with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the fortress of a mental hospital that's the only structure on the island. The case quickly, perhaps too quickly, spirals away from a mere missing persons investigation. There are the doctors (Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow) with shadowy agendas, the patient (Elias Koteas) with a connection to Teddy's earlier life, and oh yes Teddy's late wife Dolores (an indelible Michelle Williams) who isn't shy about dropping in with key bits of information. Whispers of barbaric experiments and Cold War paranoia abound. The surreal sequences with Williams are the movie's greatest visual treat and biggest problem. The scenes, taking us into Teddy's head at key moments, are beautifully shot,edited, and designed and not at all scary. Scorsese is overplaying his hand; if Teddy is busy having such operatic fantasies of his late wife then how can he be expected to solve a case?
What's equally troubling is the way Scorsese inflates Teddy's experience during the liberation of Dauchau into a major trauma. I'm not one who would argue that Nazi atrocities are off limits dramatically, but the Dauchau scenes are filmed just as lushly as the rest of the movie and seem to exist only to make Scorsese's point: The only solution to a nuclear and genocidal world is to go mad. There are multiple scenes of patients telling Teddy they don't want to leave Shutter Island (Robin Bartlett is very good as a deceptively sweet patient) because they are afraid of what's out in the world and Teddy is a man having increasing difficulty dealing with what he has become thanks to the sum of his experiences. All very well, but the philosophizing gets in the way of the police procedure almost to the point that I was ready to skip a scene or two (having read the book I knew what was coming) to get to the payoffs. The film's ending is faithful to the book but am I the only one who thinks Scorsese is twisting the twist? From the way the scene is played and shot I think it's at least possible that Scorsese is signaling surrender to a world spinning much too fast.
While it suffers from a case of Director Bloat Shutter Island is not without its pleasures. Everyone wants to work with Scorsese; there's very good acting in small roles with my favorites being Williams and Jackie Earle Haley as a patient with an unusual degree of knowledge about what's going on. Cinematographer Robert Richardson makes the wards and corridors full of lurking dangers and the soundtrack (curated by Robbie Robertson) is ideally complementary. If only Scorsese had resisted the urge to impose a meaning on it all and instead respected the low down dirty fun of his source material. Shutter Island is classy to its core but not nearly as much fun as it should have been.
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