"Shutter Island" Grade: A-
The music pounds like a jackhammer and the plot has all the subtlety of a dark and stormy night. Yet “Shutter Island” seems perfect, at least in what it sets out to do, though you’re never entirely certain. Even after the credits roll, there remains no certainty and only the slightest inclination of what was real and what was not.
Such is the power of this exceptionally effective psychological thriller that, even at the end and after much reflection, the truth still remains an illusion, leaving viewers to know only that they know nothing. Director Martin Scorsese has woven a tale that is over the top and seemingly predictable but, in truth, is an elaborate setup of deception, misdirection and madness. Everything about the plot — the haunting, over-the-top musical score, highly deliberate choreography and the great cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio — is employed to one end, one the audience doesn’t become fully aware of until well into the third act. The movie’s apparent sole aim is to mess with our heads, and “Shutter Island” is a doozy of a mind bender.
DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who is sent to a maximum-security mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island to find a missing inmate. Immediately, we know that this is like no mental hospital we’ve ever seen, a place that becomes darker and more sinister with each progressive scene. Soon, a storm hits, trapping Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) on the island with its inmates and staff, all of who remain elusive wraiths never to be nailed down or categorized.
Between the storm and the music that alternatively pulses through the screen and fades to maddening quiet, we know the film is trying to build moody atmosphere. The audience spends so much time investing itself in the way they think the film works that they ultimately buy the illusion so completely that, as the plot turns, the after image stays deeply ingrained in our psyche.
The forward momentum of the film is captivating and mystifying, building suspense and weaving the illusion until the climax. But there never really is a true climax to the film, and almost no falling action. Instead, the film builds the audience to a precipice and achingly drags them along the edge for the final 20 minutes. It is in those last minutes that a movie that had been loud and over the top reveals its true colors as a deliberate and impossibly effective deception, one that inches along at a pace that leaves the audience uncomfortable in their own skin, unable to look away and totally baffled by what is developing on screen.
Most movies have multiple qualities; “Shutter Island” uses multiple elements to achieve a single goal. As a mind bender, this technique is exceptional and haunting. As everything else, it can seem nonsensical and abrupt, yet every piece builds on that central puzzle of digging into the audience’s brain inch by inch. As the lights come back on, the audience realizes that in the dark of the theater, they have been lobotomized.
You can reach this staff writer at bkoenig@theeagleonline.com.
