Shutter Island (2010, R)

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2010)

Not much will spoil the experience of "Shutter Island" since it seems meant as a psychological riddle that once you know its clues and have an answer, you instantly have to watch it again to experience how it unfolds psychologically. The story takes place at Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane (Boston harbor, 1954), but if that doesn't tip you to its mysteriousness, then just wait for the deep tones of the music and the bloody-charred dream imagery.
The build up is similar to arriving at Skull Island in "King Kong", but perhaps a closer comparison is to imagine arriving at the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" while in a B-movie. The mixture is a bit silly, but it doesn't matter since it has 'such delightful sights to show you'. It's also a Martin Scorsese film adaption of Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel, so you get the benefit of crafty camera shifts and an almost lustful embrace of the absurd. The story doesn't seem quite worthy of his efforts at times, but perhaps that's the whole point of comparing it to horror, film noir, and B-movies as some reviews have done. It's meant to go to extremes and perhaps hide a few of its subtler secrets in shadows, fog, and rain.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars in his fourth collaboration with Martin Scorsese ("Gangs of New York", "The Aviator", "The Departed"). We enter the movie from his perspective. He's a U.S. Marshal named Edward "Teddy" Daniel, working with a new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). As he's arriving to the island on a boat, his face is white as a ghost and he's sick from the water around him. Is it seasickness or is he paranoid about water? Why are the guards in full force? Why does his partner have so much trouble handing over his gun and holster? Why do the prisoners/patients look at him oddly?
Outwardly Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner are investigating a prisoner/patient escape of a woman by the name of Rachel Solando. She developed elaborate defense mechanisms and psychological problems after she drowned her three kids. In fact, almost all of the "patients" have committed serious crimes and the hospital doubles as a specialized prison. John Carroll Lynch plays the Deputy Warden, McPherson, who is often charged with showing the federal Marshals around, and Ted Levine plays the unnamed Warden in a lesser role.
However, the head psychiatrist, Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley), prefers to treat his patients with respect under the maxim of a "moral fusion between law and order and clinical care". His hospitality extends only so far to Teddy. He allows Teddy to interview the patients and investigate Rachel's room, but he refuses to let him see the patient files. Another doctor, a German Dr. Jeremiah Naehring (Max von Sydow), sharpens the denial of Teddy's second request for the files with cryptic talk of defense mechanisms and a knowing look beside a fireplace. But you have to wonder why the doctors are so reticent to help recover the patient. Teddy rages out of Dr. Cawley's office intending to end his investigation, but a violent storm and bad migraines force him to rest for the night with the orderlies. Teddy's dreams take on a life of their own. Scorsese seems to really enjoy these dream scenes. Teddy dreams of embracing a woman with her back charred through like wood and her front leaking blood. He helps her set the three drowned children into the lake. Intermixed with these images are flashbacks to his time as a soldier, entering a German concentration camp, seeing too many bodies to count, and taking revenge on the German guards. Something in his dreams triggers him to stay on the island and continue his search. He becomes obsessed with finding Andrew Laeddis, a man he suspects of burning his house with his wife in it. (In fact, he suggests that he took the investigation to hunt the man.)
Violent extremes are central to the style of the film, and perhaps symbolize the violence of nature and its lack of morality. After the storm knocks out power, Teddy is free to roam the hospital grounds. His main fascination are two places where he hopes to find Andrew Laeddis: a lighthouse where he believes experiments and lobotomies are performed in secret, and Ward C where the most dangerous prisoners/patients reside. He visits tombs, caves, and the dark halls of Ward C. The wind picks up so violently you could swear it looked like "The Wizard of Oz" outside (during the tornado sequence). The Warden summarizes the mood: "There is no moral orders as pure as this storm. There's no moral order at all. There's just this: can my violence conquer yours?"
"Shutter Island" is lucky it came out before "Inception" because it doesn't have nearly as deep a maze of ideas. But the movie definitely challenges you to figure out Teddy's psychological state through subtle puzzle pieces. It also uses dreams to the point of confusing reality and fantasy. We don't always know whether Teddy is hallucinating some of the people he meets or whether they are actual people. As noted above, it has witty lines and excellent atmospherics. The experience of the film is more quizzical than mysterious and more strange and quirky than creepy. However, the best part is that it gives you a chance to reboot with a different mind set and re-watch it to get its full benefit. On re-watching the film it becomes more of a meditation on the human psyche: a few varieties of madness and, through subtle suggestions, Teddy's subconscious desire for violent extremes (did we miss the best comparison, as Leonardo DiCaprio's character embraces his bloody-burnt wife, with the pleasurable-horror of "Hellraiser"?).