PULPY AND DUMB, Shutter Island takes place in what US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) refers to as “a mennal ‘ospital for da criminally insane,” and a fine mennal ‘ospital it is: Full of leaky ceilings, pitch-black hallways, and flickering lights, Ashecliffe Hospital makes the joint in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like a Chuck E. Cheese.
It’s 1954, and Daniels arrives at Ashecliffe—which, naturally, is located on Boston Harbor’s remote, gloomy Shutter Island—with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate a mysterious disappearance. If the pounding, melodramatic score wasn’t enough of a clue that something isn’t right, Daniels and Aule soon meet eeevil shrink Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), whose duties at Ashecliffe are apparently split between treating patients and lurking around being all weird and sinister. Oh, and, Daniels keeps having surreal dreams about his dead wife (Michelle Williams)—not to mention gruesome flashbacks to Dachau, which he helped liberate during WWII.
Shutter Island is the sort of movie where supposedly smart characters do idiotic things; where lightning dramatically flashes to underscore plot developments; where things lunge from shadows not because it makes sense for them to do so but because… well, lunging is just what things in shadows do. Director Martin Scorsese (working from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis, who in turn is working from a book by author Dennis Lehane, he of the maudlin Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) seems eager to try out some time-honored genre clichés: In a vicious storm, there’s a winking self-awareness as Daniels and Aule tromp through a cemetery before taking shelter in a crypt; later, Daniels stoically observes a swarming army of filthy rats. The music jolts, character actors offer dire warnings, and for its first hour or so, Shutter Island is, if not scary, satisfyingly creepy.
I won’t spoil how Shutter Island ends, but suffice to say there’s a shot of DiCaprio screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” at the heavens, and also that the climax would be considered pretty shoddy even by M. Night Shyamalan’s standards. It’s not like everything in Shutter Island goes to shit all at once—it’s more of a gradual progression, with things sloooowwly getting sillier and sillier until one looks up and realizes they’re in the sort of movie where Leonardo DiCaprio is shouting “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” and some jackass in the theater is muttering “Pfft. Knew it.” It’s hard not to picture Scorsese when this happens, his caterpillar eyebrows raised in surprise: “I was just trying to make a pulpy thriller!” you can almost hear him saying over the end credits. “And then before I knew it, Leo was shoutin’ at the sky and… goddammit.”
The movie would not “be considered shoddy by M. Night Shamalan’s standards”: that statement is more akin to the writer needing something witty to say than any correct assessment of the actual film. To even compare Shamalan and Scorsese in the same breath is offensive in that Scorsese is an auteur, while Shamalan is a hack. The reviewer completely forgets to incorporate the fact that all the reasons he/she is listing for a “critical” view of the film are actually incorporated intentionally; i.e., the lighting, the “lunging”; all of which are not being utilized to create a realistic cinematic portrait, but a pastiche of sorts–built as simultaneous homage to past horror-film greats such as Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13, and so on. The “overly-dramatic musical score” that this reviewer, and the reviewer of the NY Times points to, is not incorporated as some sort of cinematically tone-deaf piece, but is incorporated, again, INTENTIONALLY, as an homage to Psycho. Does no one remember the scene where Marion Crane is driving down the road towards the Bate’s Motel, and the music is blaring INCREDIBLY LOUDLY, as in the opening sequence of Shutter Island while the detectives are driving towards the Asylum? Does no one get the fact that this is a direct cinematic-reference, and thus, is not meant to be taken in a serious context, but in a commemorative, nostalgic light? The problem with reviewers and this film is that they’re interpreting it as they would interpret any modern day, post-Se7en, thriller: they infer that the film takes itself way too seriously, and also, that it is not aware of the cultural sources of its own conception. On the contrary, Shutter Island is not intended to be a film heavily rooted in logical reality. It’s reality is based in nightmares, illogic, senseless, phantom-imagery, and manipulation of the senses. It doesn’t intend to draw a rational picture, but instead, drives to make an emotional impression. Do people criticize Quentin Tarentino for his films being chock full of cinema-cliches and archetypes? No. This is because he is widely recognized as building his art OFF OF cultural references such as the ones shown in Shutter Island. His films are referential, and utilize their own cliches as a sort of superficial layering–a sheet of allusions that coat the real substance of the film. Thus, Tarentino, like Scorsese with SI, utilizes film cliches as a stylistic approach, not as anything more than that. Just because they utilize style, does not make their films style OVER substance, but instead, substance, subsumed WITHIN style. Did people knock Peter Jackson when he reinvented King Kong? No–though they probably should’ve since that was a terrible film. Nor is it meant to be taken completely seriously. What about the scene at the end when Dicaprio falls in the exact position that Jimmy Stewart falls in Vertigo, and the camera zooms up at the exact same angle, and with the exact same speed? Is this not a blatant Hitchcock reference? Shutter Island is not meant as a straight-forward stab at realism or cheap-Shamalan type thrills. It is a synthesized piece of pop-art that takes its cues straight from the past, and reinvents these archetypes by splicing them into a conglomerative barrage of frights and nightmares. Shutter Island’s basic plot structure is the same structure of Psycho. Its revelations, story developments, and the sense of having inverted the audience’s expectations by the end of the film, are all identical. This is not film-theft, but loving film-homage. This is not hackery and cliche, but art and allusion.
Thus, it is the reviewer–not the film that is at fault. Faulty interpretation is not the fault of the film, but the viewer.
I’m as big a Scorsese apologist as the next guy, but this film was a clunker pure and simple. Its poor, sloppy filmmaking, and an insult that this film is supposed to pay homage to horror greats like Lewton and Bava.
And for the record, yes. People do criticize Tarantino for propping his tedious, vapid garbage on a mismatched jumble of cliches. But the comparison is appropriate — it seems more and more likely that ol’ Marty is spent.
YOOOOOO–excuse me? Tepid, vapid garbage is what you’re plagarizing Tarentino with? Do you have a logical argument to back that up, or are you just resting it on the haunches of what film reviewers on Amazon.com told you? Also: in what way was this film a clunker? You can’t just SAY that something is clunker, or that it was “poor, sloppy filmmaking”. I mean, if that were true, anyone could say anything, about anything. I could say that fish can bend time because they are fish. Does this make sense? No. But it has the same circular logic that you seem to want to present with your “poor, sloppy” statement. Also: just because you are a Scorsese apologist, that adds nothing to the fact that THIS WAS A GREAT FUCKING MOVIE.
Also: what evidence to you have to back up your argument that “ol’ Marty is spent”? Does that make any sense, pending the fact that his career has actually sky-rocketed in the past few years? Did you ever hear of The Departed, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, or Shine A Light? I think you ought to check the reviews for those “clunkers” and write me back with a thorough evaluation.
Sorry, but FO REAL YO? This shit was bomb.
ALSO: not to beat a dead horse, but WTF Quentin Tarentino is a GOOD director. Just because the more vapid reviewers of pop-culture will tell you that he bases himself in senseless violence, doesn’t mean you should necessarily believe it. If all you see when you watch Tarentino is stupid, senseless violence, than quite honestly it’s YOUR fault, not the film’s. Plus, EVEN if it was based solely in stupid, senseless violence (okay, maybe Kill Bill was a bit of a tease, with no real human character development) how can you say that’s any worse than 89% of Hollywood? Every romantic comedy for the past ten years? Gratuitously based in fantasy situations. Every kid’s film for the past ten years? Gratuitously aimed at making money off of your children’s short attention spans. Every action film made EVER? Playing off our own superficial libidos as dudes. At least Tarentino does stupid, senseless violence WELL. There’s a lot of shit out there that plays off of your emotional tool-bar, and exploits you, as an audience member, yet the production and execution of said manipulation is almost never so beautifully rendered, or stylistically perfected. Tarentino is STYLE. Okay, we get this. He is a director who revels in cultural allusions, blatantly stealing things, and fuses them together to make modern art. But fo real, yo? You cannot call him “pointless”, nor can you call him “garbage”. He is gratuitous, yes. But, seriously, he has a moral conjecture to make underneath all that blood and guts. What about Saving Private Ryan–was that stupid, vapid garbage? Fuck no. It got hailed as the greatest film ever made. Was it more violent than Tarentino’s recent Inglourious Basterds? HELL YES IT WAS. Is war commonly that violent for an individual soldier, as it was portrayed in SPR? Probably not. Was Spielberg trying to make a point with the fact that everything (blood and guts-wise) was so fucking amped up? Yes.
–okay. So from here, your next rebuttal would be that Saving Private Ryan elicited an accurate depiction of what war was like (even though he really didn’t), and thus, his film is legitimized, whereas Tarentino’s film should be considered “garbage” because it was comedic, and historically inaccurate. Well, okay. But Tarentino had a point to, you know. No–it wasn’t the traditional route a war film would take, but that’s what made it innovative. Again, Tarentino renovated some artifact from pop-culture (there’s actually a Inglourious Basterds made in the 70s, off of which Quentin based his film), and turned it into something completely, cinematically unique. No, this isn’t therapy for the film’s audience in the traditional sense; no, it does not sate us with moralistic monologues, images of bonding brethren, or long-drawn out sequences of war-violence that are meant to evoke in us, a sense that, (surprise, surprise) war is hell, and is, thus, a very complicated topic, and is thus, worthy of making this film about. No. Quentin doesn’t do that. What he does instead is invent an entirely alternate reality, in which America gets to play protector, and our good ol’ fashion sense of American Ideals, (i.e. freedom, liberation, the squelching of evil) is, sufficiently, utilized against the Nazis. That’s what a lot of people don’t get when they watch IB. It’s not a war film. It’s a fantasy film. It pictures America in a fashion that allows us to go back in time and, violently, cathartically, exact revenge upon the Third Reich and its nazi members. People may say this is a sick, violent impulse for a film to own and encourage in its audience members. Well…yes. That’s true. But it’s really just the sentiment that lies at the heart of every film where the bad guy dies in the end. It’s the need for moral stratification, and peace of mind through seeing the unjust suffer. Tarentino simply takes what underlies the common cinematic attitude, and exploits it to a ridiculous degree. Yet he is completely aware that he is exploitive, and he revels in it. He’s a genius director. Violent? Yes. But a producer of “garbage”? No. Absolutely not.