![\"Movie](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/shutter_island_patient_poster.jpg\" "\\"shutter_island_patient_poster\\"")
<\/a>You have had two weeks to visit your local multiplex to pay tribute to Marty. If you haven\u2019t seen \u201cShutter Island\u201d at least once by now, you\u2019re not my kind of reader. The following is intended solely for the enlightened. There are many, many spoilers ahead.<\/p>\nMost directors start their career with genre pictures as Marty did with the ultra-low budget, Roger Corman-school \u201cBoxcar Bertha.\u201d After screening the picture for mentor John Cassavetes, the Hollywood maverick looked into Marty\u2019s soul, told him that he just wasted a year of his life and asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you have something of your own that you want to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
That something became \u201cMean Streets.\u201d For nearly three decades, Scorsese has followed Cassavetes\u2019 advice to the letter, give or take \u201cCape Fear\u201d and a certain Oscar winner. During the press junket for \u201cGangs of New York,\u201d Scorsese announced, \u201cI\u2019ve made all the pictures that I originally set out to make.\u201d Over the years, Marty has told numerous interviewers that he wanted to be a Hollywood genre director, but his temperament led him down a road less followed.<\/p>\n
After \u201cGangs\u201d he has finally gotten around to giving us his take on traditional genre pictures. \u201cThe Aviator\u201d is an efficient, straightforward Hollywood biopic that uses new technology to tell an old story. \u201cThe Departed\u201d is an old fashioned Sidney Lumet cop picture\/Academy guilt trip. Even better than both of them combined, \u201cShutter Island\u201d is Marty\u2019s Hitchcock thriller with equal doses of Sam Fuller and Val Lewton thrown in to fill out a satisfying Sunday matinee.<\/p>\n
The idea had been growing in Marty\u2019s head for quite some time. During the preparation of \u201cShutter Island,\u201d Scorsese produced and narrated \u201cVal Lewton: The Man in the Shadows,\u201d a documentary about the revered 1940\u2019s \u201cB\u201d noir horror producer. \u201cBedlam,\u201d the last picture in Lewton\u2019s nine noir cycle at RKO, takes place in London\u2019s legendary insane asylum. The original title of Scorsese\u2019s film (\u201cAshecliffe\u201d) indicated that it might be patterned after the Lewton classic.<\/p>\n
With its cramped, dankly lit interiors, much of the look of Scorsese\u2019s fever dream can be traced back to Lewton. At its thematic core the film owes more to Hitchcock\u2019s deeply personal self-portrait, \u201cVertigo,\u201d and Sam Fuller\u2019s \u201cShock Corridor.\u201d (In the latter, a newspaper reporter checks into a mental hospital to solve a story and winds up more insane than any of its inhabitants.)<\/p>\n
There is nothing quite so much fun as the act of being fooled. Marty hoodwinked me 110 percent of the way. I should have caught on the second I saw the digital recreations of 50s matte shots during Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule\u2019s (Mark Ruffalo) boat trip to the island. The stylistic application of intentional artifice should have been an instant tip-off that what we were looking at wasn\u2019t meant to be believed. There was also something not right about Chuck\u2019s over-familiar use of \u201cboss\u201d each time he addressed his new partner. And after the tenth time, Teddy\u2019s forceful boasts that he\u2019s a U.S. Marshal begin to sound like he is trying to convince himself of the fact.<\/p>\n
Teddy hits shore already agitated and feeling overly aggressive. He came to the right place. \u201cShutter Island\u201d houses an elite group of America\u2019s most dangerous and damaged patients perfectly distilled in a 1954 microcosm that also reflects current societal fears.<\/p>\n
All of the film\u2019s establishing shots are perfectly balanced and composed, but the music signals that this will soon change. An aerial shot on the island, a skillful homage to \u201cNight of the Hunter,\u201d immediately pulls us into the action. Teddy and Chuck are there to investigate the disappearance of female patient Rachel 1 (Emily Mortimer) who murdered her three children. As the crime drama unfolds we are treated to a series of flashbacks revealing Teddy\u2019s backstory concerning his late wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) and his military experience liberating Dachau.<\/p>\n
The basic narrative is as straight-forward as anything the man has directed and there is very little in the way of visual panache. \u201cShutter Island\u201d doesn\u2019t jump at you like some of his other films. It slowly draws in the viewer without once tipping its hand. As always, it\u2019s his command of the medium that makes it all so fascinating.<\/p>\n
In \u201cBedlam,\u201d Lewton stocks his asylum with what amounts to the forefather of motion pictures. (The character invented the flip-book.) In Marty\u2019s self-reflexive madhouse he cast Elias Koteas as a villain from Teddy\u2019s past. He is given 60 seconds to execute a fireside transformation from Travis Bickle into Max Cady. Koteas\u2019 conversion is not the real thing, but an amazing simulation.<\/p>\n
The women in a Scorsese picture usually draw little more than a beating. Dolores\u2019 flowery summer dress soon becomes a blood splattered shroud. She\u2019s shot, soiled and incinerated, yet her existence overshadows the entire proceeding. Not unlike Jimmy Conway in \u201cGoodfellas,\u201d her time onscreen doesn\u2019t amount to much, but her presence is felt in every frame. In what could be Marty\u2019s most erotic onscreen moment to date, she straddles her husband and teases him to put a bullet in her.<\/p>\n
As the plot unravels, Teddy finds Rachel 2 (Patricia Clarkson) hiding out in a cave. She listens to all of his questions and her answers are worse than anything he feared. The head doctors are former OSS and the island project is funded by an HUAC doctors\u2019 experiment on patients with psychotropic drugs in hopes of creating a generation of Manchurian candidates.<\/p>\n
In the film\u2019s best line of dialog, Rachel 2, now cast a psychiatrist, predicts, \u201cIn fifty years they\u2019re going to trace it all back to here.\u201d Novelist Dennis Lehane uses the not-so-distant past as a metaphor for contemporary paranoia. Having never read one of his novels, my only familiarity with the author is another horrific tragedy, Clint Eastwood\u2019s adaptation of \u201cMystic River.\u201d This guy\u2019s work features more dead kids than a Nancy Grace marathon.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s over, \u201cShutter Island\u201d could amount to Marty\u2019s most cruel feature. I never once felt pity for the Goodfellas or Jake LaMotta and the ironic twist at the end of \u201cTaxi Driver\u201d added more fun to match the horror. If \u201cTaxi Driver\u201d is a story about a man making himself sane, \u201cShutter Island\u201d is its mirror opposite. Structurally it\u2019s closest in line to \u201cAfter Hours,\u201d another journey through an Emerald City gone bad. (It\u2019s always been my contention that \u201cAfter Hours\u201d is Marty\u2019s negative image of \u201cThe Wizard of Oz.\u201d) In each case the protagonist comes face to face with his or her true madness in order to find redemption. But you can\u2019t really classify \u201cShutter Island\u201d as a descent into madness. Upon his arrival, Teddy had already been a mental patient for two years.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until Kingsley, The Wonderful Wizard of Ashecliffe, asks, \u201cBaby, why are you all wet?\u201d that it began to congeal. Sir Ben is left with the unenviable task of breaking poor Teddy\u2019s spell. He does it by forcing him to accept reality: There is no place like home. Unfortunately, and this is the true tragedy of the film, when we discover Teddy\u2019s real home life it\u2019s much worse than anything he encountered inside the halls of Ashecliffe.u<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cShutter Island\u201d Directed by Martin Scorsese Written by Laeta Kalogridis from a novel by Dennis Lehane Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max von Sydow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars By Scott Marks SDUN Film Critic You have had two weeks to visit your local multiplex to pay tribute to […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":243250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Movie review: Shutter Island spoilers ahead","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}