Shutter Island: the movie

A while ago I posted about the novel Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. I hadn't seen the movie then but I finally have.

The film Shutter Island (rated R) is directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, and Michelle Williams. It sticks very closely to the storyline of the novel from which it's adapted, and it can be described in the same words from Publishers Weekly - [It] carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written. But as anyone who has read him knows, Lehane, despite his mastery of the mechanics of suspense, is about much more than twists; here, he's in pursuit of the nature of self-knowledge and self-deception, and the ways in which both can be warped by violence and evil.

Critics varied widely on what they thought of the movie - Ebert gave it three and a half stars out of four, A.O. Scott of The New York Times thought it was terrible, and John Anderson at the Wall Street Journal thought it was great.

Here's part of Ebert's review ....

Shutter Island
BY ROGER EBERT / February 17, 2010

[...] Shutter Island, we're told, is a remote and craggy island off Boston, where a Civil War-era fort has been adapted as a prison for the criminally insane. We approach it by boat through lowering skies, and the feeling is something like the approach to King Kong's island: Looming in gloom from the sea, it fills the visitor with dread. To this island travel U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo).

It's 1954, and they are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a child murderer (Emily Mortimer). There seems to be no way to leave the island alive. The disappearance of one prisoner might not require the presence of two marshals unfamiliar with the situation, but we never ask that question. Not after the ominous walls of the prison arise. Not after the visitors are shown into the office of the prison medical director, Dr. Cawley, played by Ben Kingsley with that forbidding charm he has mastered.

It's clear that Teddy has no idea what he's getting himself into. Teddy -- such an innocuous name in such a gothic setting. Scorsese, working from a novel by Dennis Lehane, seems to be telling a simple enough story here; the woman is missing, and Teddy and Chuck will look for her. But the cold, gray walls clamp in on them, and the offices of Cawley and his colleagues, furnished for the Civil War commanding officers, seem borrowed from a tale by Edgar Allan Poe .....

he film's primary effect is on the senses. Everything is brought together into a disturbing foreshadow of dreadful secrets. How did this woman escape from a locked cell in a locked ward in the old fort, its walls thick enough to withstand cannon fire? Why do Cawley and his sinister colleague Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow, ready to play chess with Death) seem to be concealing something? Why is even such a pleasant person as the deputy warden not quite convincingly friendly? (He's played by John Carroll Lynch, Marge's husband in "Fargo," so you can sense how nice he should be.) Why do the methods in the prison trigger flashbacks to Teddy's memories of helping to liberate a Nazi death camp? ......

There are thrilling visuals in "Shutter Island." Another film Scorsese showed his cast was Hitchcock's "Vertigo," and we sense echoes of its hero's fear of heights. 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 ......

Ebert mentions that a number of critics felt that the story was incomprehensible and that the ending was from out of the blue, and he responds that some people may like the movie better after having seen it a couple of times. I think part of why I liked the movie was that I had already read the book and not only knew what was going on and what was coming, but had a much more intimate knowledge of the main character. I'm not the greatest fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and I wasn't sure he could do right by Teddy, but he actually did an excellent job. Ben Kingsly was very good too. Though it took me a while to become engaged by the film, by the end of it I was very involved .... like the book, I found it disturbing, tragic, and haunting.