Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter Island
Did
Martin Scorsese's latest have you wishing for his mighty back
catalogue? Or did you enjoy his old-fashioned potboiler for its own
sake? And has Leonardo DiCaprio finally grown up?
Look out! Twist coming … Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter Island
One gets the impression that Martin Scorsese suffers somewhat from the exalted standing of his own back catalogue when it comes to critical notices. Had it been filmed by a newcomer, rather than the familiar, bushy-browed cineaste who shot Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Departed, Shutter Island might just have received top notch reviews all round. As it is, this skilfully concocted psychological thriller noir appears to be well received, yet some reviewers seem inclined to peck at its awkward eccentricities.
1. Shutter Island
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 138 mins
6. Directors: Martin Scorsese
7. Cast: Ben Kingsley, Elias Koteas, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Sir Ben Kingsley, Ted Levine
8. More on this film
That is perhaps understandable. The film has a B-movie sheen, yet runs to two hours 20 minutes and takes itself rather too seriously for an old-fashioned potboiler. It features a plot twist that is signposted repeatedly from the film's first half hour onwards, and its air of mystery and sense of things being not quite what they seem are borrowed unmistakably from Hitchcock. And yet for all this, one gets the impression that most critics rather enjoyed Shutter Island, despite the odd moan about DiCaprio's baby-faced features or the director's over-reliance on genre conventions.
Scorsese's film takes place almost entirely on an island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane in the mid-50s. From the minute they disembark, US marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are confronted by a nightmarish, gothic bedlam of lost souls and sinister seeming doctors and psychiatrists, including the mysterious Dr John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the man in charge of the place. The two men are ostensibly on the island to investigate the strange disappearance of a patient locked up after murdering her three children. But it soon becomes clear that Teddy has his own reasons for visiting, which are connected to the death of his wife a few years earlier.
"In Shutter Island Scorsese opens the film-noir casket and plays about with the contents – for his pleasure and at our expense," writes Kate Muir in the Times. "The movie is overloaded with gruesome scenes in saturated colour. Every horror cliché is there, from Nazi doctors to children's corpses, rats, screaming violins and lunatics with stapled heads rusting behind bars. There's not a moment's respite from the melodrama, in a film with so many red herrings that it needs a fishing quota."
"Martin Scorsese's new movie is a tale of sound and fury, signifying … well, not nothing exactly, but a heck of a lot less than it promises, given the straining intensity of those performances, the glowering darkness of mood, the grand gesture at 20th-century history's grimmest nightmares, and the sheer length," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "The silly twist ending is supremely exasperating, and creating the narrative foundation for this final revelatory whiplash has meant laying down some long scenes that at the time look baffling and unconvincing. However, I admit everything looks good and fits together, and the film packs a fair-sized punch."
"Once you get past the trickery, Shutter Island offers sumptuous, enthralling, shivery gothic film-making with a hardboiled heart and a sly line in asylum humour," writes Empire's Kim Newman. "If a pot is being boiled, at least it's an intricately-decorated pot on a spectacular fire."
"There are thrilling visuals in Shutter Island," writes Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. "There's the possibility that the escaped woman might be lurking in a cave on a cliff, or hiding in a lighthouse. Both involve hazardous terrain to negotiate, above vertiginous falls to waves pounding on the rocks below. A possible hurricane is approaching. Light leaks out of the sky. The wind sounds mournful. It is, as they say, a dark and stormy night. And that's what the movie is about: atmosphere, ominous portents, the erosion of Teddy's confidence and even his identity. It's all done with flawless directorial command. Scorsese has fear to evoke, and he does it with many notes."
Like Hitchcock's Vertigo, to which it has been compared by many critics, I wonder whether Shutter Island might be seen in a more positive light in years to come. It is perhaps too derivative of the earlier film-maker's work to ever be considered a truly characteristic classic of late-era Scorsese, yet this is a hugely intriguing, darkly rich piece of cinema, stylishly wrought and with wonderfully enigmatic performances from the entire cast.
I'm shocked to note that it runs to 140 minutes, for this is a film which has never a dull moment. We may be well aware that there is something unreliable about the narrative being woven before our eyes, but that never stops us from being desperate to know exactly what is going on. It should also be mentioned that the cinematography, by Robert Richardson, has created such a vividly otherworldly setting that I wondered several times whether certain buildings and locations were being rendered in Sin City-style CGI. How suitable for the depiction of venues which must appear not altogether real.
Shutter Island has been Scorsese and DiCaprio's biggest hit so far at the box office, taking more than $160m (£105m) around the world, but how do you rate it? Is this one up there with the film-maker's best, and should we really be comparing it to Hitchcock's greatest movies? Or is it, at best, a derivative and over-adorned genre piece which no one will remember in a decade's time?
Finally, I'm intrigued to get your views on DiCaprio, as I'm personally getting a little tired of the constantly trotted out suggestion from critics that he's an actor with a narrow range who struggles to play more "adult" roles due to his youthful appearance and the supposedly charmed nature of his own life and career. Aside from any other matter, has no one else noticed how toadily homely the man's features have become since he piled on the muscle for Gangs of New York a few years back? He is hardly the cherubic presence of Romeo + Juliet these days, and surely proved in The Departed that he can pull off the hard-bitten outsider role with aplomb. But perhaps you disagree?
One gets the impression that Martin Scorsese suffers somewhat from the exalted standing of his own back catalogue when it comes to critical notices. Had it been filmed by a newcomer, rather than the familiar, bushy-browed cineaste who shot Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Departed, Shutter Island might just have received top notch reviews all round. As it is, this skilfully concocted psychological thriller noir appears to be well received, yet some reviewers seem inclined to peck at its awkward eccentricities.
1. Shutter Island
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): 15
5. Runtime: 138 mins
6. Directors: Martin Scorsese
7. Cast: Ben Kingsley, Elias Koteas, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Sir Ben Kingsley, Ted Levine
8. More on this film
That is perhaps understandable. The film has a B-movie sheen, yet runs to two hours 20 minutes and takes itself rather too seriously for an old-fashioned potboiler. It features a plot twist that is signposted repeatedly from the film's first half hour onwards, and its air of mystery and sense of things being not quite what they seem are borrowed unmistakably from Hitchcock. And yet for all this, one gets the impression that most critics rather enjoyed Shutter Island, despite the odd moan about DiCaprio's baby-faced features or the director's over-reliance on genre conventions.
Scorsese's film takes place almost entirely on an island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane in the mid-50s. From the minute they disembark, US marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are confronted by a nightmarish, gothic bedlam of lost souls and sinister seeming doctors and psychiatrists, including the mysterious Dr John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the man in charge of the place. The two men are ostensibly on the island to investigate the strange disappearance of a patient locked up after murdering her three children. But it soon becomes clear that Teddy has his own reasons for visiting, which are connected to the death of his wife a few years earlier.
"In Shutter Island Scorsese opens the film-noir casket and plays about with the contents – for his pleasure and at our expense," writes Kate Muir in the Times. "The movie is overloaded with gruesome scenes in saturated colour. Every horror cliché is there, from Nazi doctors to children's corpses, rats, screaming violins and lunatics with stapled heads rusting behind bars. There's not a moment's respite from the melodrama, in a film with so many red herrings that it needs a fishing quota."
"Martin Scorsese's new movie is a tale of sound and fury, signifying … well, not nothing exactly, but a heck of a lot less than it promises, given the straining intensity of those performances, the glowering darkness of mood, the grand gesture at 20th-century history's grimmest nightmares, and the sheer length," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "The silly twist ending is supremely exasperating, and creating the narrative foundation for this final revelatory whiplash has meant laying down some long scenes that at the time look baffling and unconvincing. However, I admit everything looks good and fits together, and the film packs a fair-sized punch."
"Once you get past the trickery, Shutter Island offers sumptuous, enthralling, shivery gothic film-making with a hardboiled heart and a sly line in asylum humour," writes Empire's Kim Newman. "If a pot is being boiled, at least it's an intricately-decorated pot on a spectacular fire."
"There are thrilling visuals in Shutter Island," writes Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. "There's the possibility that the escaped woman might be lurking in a cave on a cliff, or hiding in a lighthouse. Both involve hazardous terrain to negotiate, above vertiginous falls to waves pounding on the rocks below. A possible hurricane is approaching. Light leaks out of the sky. The wind sounds mournful. It is, as they say, a dark and stormy night. And that's what the movie is about: atmosphere, ominous portents, the erosion of Teddy's confidence and even his identity. It's all done with flawless directorial command. Scorsese has fear to evoke, and he does it with many notes."
Like Hitchcock's Vertigo, to which it has been compared by many critics, I wonder whether Shutter Island might be seen in a more positive light in years to come. It is perhaps too derivative of the earlier film-maker's work to ever be considered a truly characteristic classic of late-era Scorsese, yet this is a hugely intriguing, darkly rich piece of cinema, stylishly wrought and with wonderfully enigmatic performances from the entire cast.
I'm shocked to note that it runs to 140 minutes, for this is a film which has never a dull moment. We may be well aware that there is something unreliable about the narrative being woven before our eyes, but that never stops us from being desperate to know exactly what is going on. It should also be mentioned that the cinematography, by Robert Richardson, has created such a vividly otherworldly setting that I wondered several times whether certain buildings and locations were being rendered in Sin City-style CGI. How suitable for the depiction of venues which must appear not altogether real.
Shutter Island has been Scorsese and DiCaprio's biggest hit so far at the box office, taking more than $160m (£105m) around the world, but how do you rate it? Is this one up there with the film-maker's best, and should we really be comparing it to Hitchcock's greatest movies? Or is it, at best, a derivative and over-adorned genre piece which no one will remember in a decade's time?
Finally, I'm intrigued to get your views on DiCaprio, as I'm personally getting a little tired of the constantly trotted out suggestion from critics that he's an actor with a narrow range who struggles to play more "adult" roles due to his youthful appearance and the supposedly charmed nature of his own life and career. Aside from any other matter, has no one else noticed how toadily homely the man's features have become since he piled on the muscle for Gangs of New York a few years back? He is hardly the cherubic presence of Romeo + Juliet these days, and surely proved in The Departed that he can pull off the hard-bitten outsider role with aplomb. But perhaps you disagree?
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