Scare-sese's 'Shutter Island' fueled by death, dread and deception

Posted February 17, 2010 10:00 pm

Dann Gire

The scariest parts of Martin Scorsese's surrealistically creepy thriller "Shutter Island" aren't the sudden shocks, or the terrifying visions, or the bizarre revelations, or even the vanishing bodies.

As you watch "Shutter Island," a palpable sense of paranoia slowly tightens around your throat like an invisible wire noose.

Tighter.

Tighter. Until you feel just as trapped, as frightened, as confused and as helpless as the U.S. marshal at the center of Scorsese's waking nightmare.

I am sure other critics will make this obvious connection, but "Shutter Island" is to Scorsese what "The Shining" is to the late Stanley Kubrick: a stylish, artful study in the power of escalating dread.

The comparisons between "Shutter Island" and "The Shining" are appropriate, and not necessarily all positive.

Both films are beleaguered by cold, unfathomable main characters we can't quite access or truly get to know.

But that's all right, because these movies aren't about relating to the main characters. They're all about two master moviemakers slumming in a "lesser" genre who know just how to ratchet up the tension by plying their knowledge of film and storytelling to create a dark and disorienting experience that will leave us exhausted.

"Shutter Island," faithfully adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from a 2003 Dennis Lehane best-seller, brings U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Scorsese favorite Leonardo DiCaprio) to an island outside of Boston on what appears to be a missing persons case in 1954.

With him comes a new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), an older but less experienced marshal. They have been dispatched to Ashecliffe Island, home of a hospital for the criminally insane.

One of the patients, the dangerous Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), has vanished into thin air. She killed her three children, but thinks they're still alive.

The place is run by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a polite, effete man with an air of unmistakable superiority. He seems anxious to help the marshals, but only to a point.

When Cawley begins to bristle at the marshals' requests, Daniels suspects there are secrets to be uncovered at Ashecliffe Island.

Daniels has a few secrets of his own. He is tormented by memories of liberating a Nazi death camp during the waning days of World War II.

He is equally haunted by visions of his dead wife Dolores (Michelle Williams), burned alive in a house fire set by an arsonist that Daniels has sworn to find and kill.

By setting "Shutter Island" during the Cold War, the film parlays America's anti-Red obsession into a nifty plot point. If Daniels is really as loose a cannon as he professes, Aule wonders if the missing woman might be just a ruse to lure them to the island. But why?

Beyond this, describing the plot becomes problematic, because, as you might guess from the lurid, pupil-punching TV commercials for "Shutter Island," things soon take a hallucinogenic turn down Elm Street with the brakes off.

A horrific weather storm hits the island, and with it a secondary psychological storm far more devastating. Cue the failing electrical power and things that go bump in the broad daylight.

This is Scorsese having fun with a pure, old-fashioned movie-movie, a popcorny confection that gives a first-class treatment to what could have been a moody, frightful low-budget B horror flick.

Aided by Dante Ferretti's cold and stony sets, plus a soundtrack pockmarked by dissonantly harsh and nerve-jangling noises, "Shutter Island" is a grandiose journey into the sort of madhouse manipulation Alfred Hitchcock would have enjoyed.

Finally, the eternally youthful DiCaprio has grown into his role as a veteran tough guy who wears his problems like an old worn leather jacket.

His performance is a slice of sweet torment.

"Shutter Island"

★★★★

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Other: A Paramount Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, violence. 138 minutes

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