Above average, but a worrying lack of ambition from Scorsese

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2010)

Almost two decades after the release of Cape Fear, it seems that this minor opus from a major American director was more of a turning point than anybody would have thought at the time. Considered as a slight bow to the mainstream, it was in fact an entire new direction.
Martin Scorsese's latest studio effort, Shutter Island, a period thriller with a schizophrenic twist a la M Night Shyamalan, adapted from Dennis Lehane eponymous best- seller, sums up what kind of filmmaker Scorsese has become in the last twenty years: a gifted craftsman, a world apart from the rebellious neurotic genius he was in the 1970s. One can easily draw parallels between the two films: retro atmosphere, B-movie material, some cheap thrills enhanced by a bit of gore and a soundtrack of Herrmann-esque strings constantly on the verge of parody. In an interview given during the promotion of Cape Fear and compiled in Scorsese: Inteviews by Peter Brunette, the filmmaker ironically calls his remake of Thompson's thriller a "real movie", an "A-to-B-to-C film": the same category that Shutter Island falls into. It is what the French would call an exercice de style – a shot at making a codified, straight genre picture, a mere study of style over substance.
Shutter Island tells the story of Teddy Daniels, a federal agent sent to a remote asylum on a barren island, home of America's most dangerous and deranged criminals, to investigate the disappearance of a murderess. The mystery soon thickens and Daniels realises that he may be at the centre of a frightening conspiracy. The problem with Shutter Island is that, even viewed as a "guilty pleasure" offering from a respectable auteur, it is not entirely successful.
Aesthetically, the film is often gorgeous: the set and costumes are incredibly accurate to Lehane descriptions; every shot is expertly framed and an abundance of Scorsese's cinephilic obsessions will satisfy the knowing viewer: a Powell & Pressburger homage here, (the spiral staircase from The Red Shoes, the high angle shot of the cliff from Black Narcissus), a Samuel Fuller reference there (Shock Corridor is still the benchmark of all asylum movies). The dream scenes are vivid, thanks to Robert Richardson's brightly contrasted photography (he was after all the man who shot all those glaring neons and flashy suits in Casino), particularly the concentration camp flashbacks: the haunting glimpse at a pile of corpses petrified in ice and the agony of the German officer are powerful tableaux of human savagery.
But despite all its graphic excellence, Shutter Island fails to be Scorsese's Shinning. Mainly because of its weak material: it is hard to recognise the touch of the writer of Gone Baby Gone or the contributor to The Wire in this half-baked story, which re-use a clunky final twist already seen in half a dozen films since Fight Club and his split-personality narrator. The flaws of the pedestrian script are laid-bare by the ridiculous length of the film, clocking at more than 2 hours and half, which is over-zealously faithful to Lehane's book and struggles to sustain interest in the plot past the first act. The delays in the film post-production (Shutter Island was shot in 2008 and its release reported several times last year) seem to indicate that Scorsese did not find the solution in the editing room, where he is usually at his best.
Generally, Shutter Island is victim of its sophistication. Scorsese, who should know how to wrap a B-movie since he went to Roger Corman's school back in the early seventies, pushes all the right buttons but the overall seriousness of the direction kills the joy. As usual, DiCaprio is not bad but remains bland, just as the rest of the cast, who all seem so impressed to work with the legendary director that they are unable to deliver a memorable performance.
Sadder is to see Scorsese gradually abandoning his themes and visual signatures (the virtuoso tracking shots, the reckless editing) in favour of a studio approach to film-making – flawless but impersonal. Now an Oscar-winner for his mediocre The Departed, the maverick has joined the ranks of the Hollywood establishment. Shutter Island is far from a total failure, but with all the talent involved, it feels a bit like a waste of everyone's time.
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