Shutter Island review

A note: I'm not going to get into spoilers in this review, but I'll be discussing some things about Shutter Island that'll probably affect the viewing experience going in, so if you haven't seen it yet and are hell-bent on going in pristine, you might want to save this for later.

As a Martin Scorsese diehard, I was really looking forward to Shutter Island. I'd probably go see anything that Scorsese puts out, but I was especially excited by the trailers for this one; which promised an unapologetic, atmospheric thriller with a great cast, topped off by Scorsese's unmatched visual command. And that's pretty much what it is. So why didn't it blow me away like I was hoping it would?

Here's the problem with Shutter Island: it's a genre picture. Specifically, it's what's often referred to as a 'psychological thriller,' which in these days is essentially shorthand for "a plot-driven drama constructed to set up at least one major third-act twist in the narrative.' It'll come as no surprise that I love this type of movie, when it's done well. That last caveat is important, because post -The Sixth Sense American cinema has been inundated with terrible twist-based movies. To my mind, there are two main determinants of whether this type of movie "works." It's obviously best if both are present, but if a movie doesn't have the first one, it really, really ought to nail the second. They are:

(a) The twist is something truly original.
(b) The film is so tightly plotted that the twist, although foreshadowed, catches the audience by surprise, usually because of clever misdirection created by emphasizing some other aspect of the plot.

Shutter Island doesn't pass either of these tests. Without spoiling it, the plot twist in Shutter Island is a variant of something I've seen so many separate times that I can't even associate it with just one other piece of work (although a few candidates come to mind). Again, that's not a make-or-break thing; the success of a thriller has much more to do with execution than with concept. But here's the problem: if somebody put a gun to Martin Scorsese's head and threatened to pull the trigger unless he made a movie with a running time of under two hours, Scorsese would, without fucking question, be dead. Shutter Island is 138 minutes long, which is at least 20 minutes too many, and probably 30. The bloat doesn't really become apparent until early in the third act, where Leonardo DiCaprio's character has two back-to-back interactions with characters who essentially reiterate thematic undertones that were fairly unsubtly voiced by completely different characters an hour earlier. This kind of flab is lethal to a thriller plot.

The issue with Shutter Island in a nutshell is that Martin Scorsese isn't really a director who focuses on plot; he's a director that focuses on visuals and theme. These strengths are on full display in Shutter Island. The set design and cinematography are typically stellar. From the opening of the film, Scorsese uses a truly brilliant array of cinematic tricks to foreshadow the climactic twist, and there's an impressive use of historical allusions and parallels woven into the story throughout. The highlights of the film are the set-piece flashbacks that Leonardo DiCaprio's character experiences continually; they're magnificently conceived and poetically executed. Unfortunately, they also telegraph the ending so heavily that they drain a lot of the ambiguity that the film desperately needs to sustain the narrative tension through the third act. The result is somewhat like watching a magician who performs a clever trick but can't quite sell the illusion to the audience. (Although, I have to add that the very last scene in the movie is fantastic and nearly redeems the disappointing elements of the twist).

I'd kind of like to see Scorsese put out two different versions of Shutter Island. One would be about 100 minutes long and would jettison the abstract visuals in favor of tightening up the plot around the central twist, as a traditional thriller would. The other would downplay the plot even further and go to town on the visual and thematic aspects to create an ambiguous tone. I think that the what's in theaters now plays like a compromise between elements of both of these "movies" that doesn't quite resolve the tensions between them in a satisfactory way.

I'm being rough on Shutter Island, but I actually think it's a very interesting film, and one I'd like to see again unburdened of the need to focus on the plot. Even though it's not a very efficient film, it is a very well-constructed one on a number of levels, which I think that I might appreciate better on another viewing. As it stands, though, it's not as good at first viewing as I had hoped it would be. Your mileage may vary.