A dazzling mess

Rating: 5/10 (21 February 2010)

Acting? Top notch. Cinematography? Perfect. Grotesque images? In spades. Foreboding music? You bet. Gothic atmosphere? Ooo-eee-ooo.
The problem here is the story and the way it is told. I had read Dennis Lehane's novel going in and knew the basic arc of the story and the big reveal at the end, but this version stuffs way too much into a relatively simple mystery story. Shutter Island could be ... THIS! Or it could be ... THAT! Or it could be ... SOME OTHER AWFUL THING! And why do we need World War II flashbacks? What do Nazis and Holocaust victims add to the story, except to give Scorcese a chance to show mournful starving Jews, a pile of bodies topped by a heartbreaking little dead girl clutching at her dead mother and an, admittedly masterful, tracking shot of Nazis being mowed down by righteous GIs. Take that, Quentin.
And here's a small annoyance. As the GIs enter what is clearly stated as Dachau concentration camp, which is in Germany, we see the famous arch that says, "Arbeit macht frei" (work sets you free). Trouble is, that arch isn't at Dachau, it's at Auschwitz, which is in Poland. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army. Why can't Scorcese leave well enough alone? Things are over amplified. You can't just show a Nazi commandant's office, it has to be full of blowing paper. You can't just have stormy weather, it has to be a raging hurricane. You can't just show a woman living in a cave, you have to be sure we see the canned rations and canteen of water that keep her alive. Things to marvel at, for sure, but ultimately distracting.
After a while, it's hard to tell when U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leo DiCaprio) is hallucinating and when he is not. In one scene, he wakes up from a bad dream and immediately begins hallucinating ... or is it more of the bad dream? Hmm. One can almost hear Scorcese say, "Hey, let's not just blow up a car, let's put Teddy's hallucinated wife and daughter into the explosion!" Taken together, these things cause a lot of suspense to drain out of the movie and it ends up being a gorgeously made creep-out flick.