A Visit to Shutter Island

“I can’t stomach the water,” says a seasick U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) to his partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) on a boat to the infamous Shutter Island. A clever and ironic line in the opening sequence that one can’t help but interpret as a reference to Leo’s other water-heavy film—Titanic. But Shutter Island is not Titanic, and DiCaprio’s performance in the Martin Scorsese-directed film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, is delicately nuanced and highlights the actor’s growth in his craft.

Part psychological thriller, part historical fiction, with a sprinkling of fantasy/horror and romance, and a dash of detective flick, Shutter Island is an exercise in generic mixing that audiences are probably not used to seeing Scorsese direct. Set in 1950s Boston, the film follows Daniels as he and his partner come to Shutter Island, home of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, to solve a missing person’s case.

The plot of the movie is standard. Secrets lurk in every nook and cranny of the eerie psychiatric institution, and as mysteries are uncovered and covered again, the truth and reality become more obscured for both Daniels as well as the audience. Reveals escalate in intensity and culminate with the most dramatic and shocking moments of the film. While Shutter Island is incredibly formulaic, what is not is Scorsese’s direction and DiCaprio’s performance. We’ve seen other amazing Director/Actor pairs over the years: Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp…and of course, Scorsese and Robert DeNiro. These collaborations are at their best when both director and actor are pushing each other towards artistic growth and achievement.

We see Scorsese and DiCaprio do just that in Shutter Island. The film requires Leo to be more vulnerable as a protagonist than he has ever been. More than that, it requires the spectator to completely identify with his plight both emotionally and physically. This is where the genius of Scorsese comes into play—from strategic camera angles and movements to the placement of sound, the island becomes a character itself. There are sequences in the film that are beautiful, both cinematically and in the development of the narrative because of DiCaprio’s acting and Scorsese’s use of the camera. A journey into the confines of the forbidden Ward C is made even more suspenseful by the flickering of a match…a light that keeps going in and out as Daniels speaks to a “prisoner” and begs for answers enveloped in the confines of the hospital—answers that are continually escaping his grasp.

Ultimately, audiences will hopefully appreciate the intricacies of the production itself in addition to the twists and turns that the film puts forth in its narrative. While the movie could have been a tad shorter (at a running time of nearly 2 ½ hours it is hard for even the most well-intentioned project to not bathe in exposition), the slow pacing of the film was a choice—for better or for worse. But what sold me on Shutter Island was the energy that clearly exuded on screen from both DiCaprio and Scorsese…a great partnership indeed!