Shutter Island Lives Up to the Name

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2010)

From the first note of the score, to the last shot on the screen I was completely enthralled by Martin Scorsese's latest Picture. Shutter Island, the story of two federal marshals investigating a patient escape at a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, is very simply put: an experience. Shutter Island works because it pulls at all different emotions. An audience is both humored, and on the edge of tears; jumping out of their seat, and sinking deep within it. For 2 hours and 18 minutes, one is completely submerged into a Gothic, noir like world that is intriguing and horrifying at the same time.
Shutter Island is definitely under the genre of thriller, but it is much more than just this. Sir Kingsley said it beautifully the next day at a press conference I attended: "Though it looks like a thriller, the glue that holds it together is varying levels of tenderness." The characters are enthralling and real, whether it be the protagonist, Teddy (DiCaprio) or Dr. Cawley, the head psychiatrist of the asylum (Sir Kingsley). From the opening shot to the final scene, the audience is left guessing to the mysteries of this island and its patients, being thrown into a world that is extremely claustrophobic without being tightly spaced. This feeling, and the success of the island's atmosphere, can be credited in many ways to the film's iconic director, Martin Scorsese.
Fresh off his first Oscar ever for Best Director in The Departed, Scorsese takes things to a different gear in Shutter Island. While The Departed was a modern day mob thriller, Shutter Island is set in the 1950's, post WWII and at the start of the Cold War and McCarthyism Era. Paranoia is at an all-time high, many people are on edge, and this story is not only set during this time period, but on a secluded, Gothic island with only one way to leave and at the start of a terrible hurricane. If that doesn't excite an audience, it should simply be Scorsese's style. The film is full of flashbacks and haunting dream sequences that range in location from the island itself to the concentration camp at Dachau. The audience is constantly trapped in a world where one questions what is reality and what is dream. This is already interesting on paper, as seen in the critic's praise of Dennis Lehane's novel which the film is adapted from, but Scorsese absolutely blows the audience out of the water with the visuals; frightening images of pain and anguish, terrifying fears and paranoia, and jarring cuts and sequences that leave the viewer as haunted as the characters themselves. Scorsese truly rolls up his sleeves and produces a powerfully intense film that shakes the viewer until the very end.
Aside from the amazing direction, the acting performances in this film were quite moving as well. Dicaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Sir Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, and Emily Mortimer were brilliant in their roles and (with the help of a masterful director's skill) took Shutter Island to a terrifyingly beautiful place that keeps us wanting more and more. From every beautiful crane shot, to each close up, Shutter Island is the latest tour de force in an already astonishing resume for Martin Scorsese. No one ever escapes Shutter Island unscathed, but if you can handle its pure power, it truly is a fantastic cinematic experience.