Martin Scorsese's latest effort, Shutter Island, has people talking, mainly about the solution to the mystery introduced in the opening scenes, a solution some see coming while others don't, judging from conversations I've read online so far. I'd say the ending doesn't matter as much as the film itself but that the film itself isn't good enough to carry the weight of an ending that doesn't matter as much. And it's not because Scorsese does a bad job of directing, in fact, I'd say he does an excellent job. Robert Richardson does an superb job framing the shots Scorsese wants and Thelma Schoonmaker does her usual level best at editing it all together in a quickly paced but not frenetic fashion. The performances are solid as well with everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, as the two Federal Marshalls investigating the mystery, to Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, as doctors at the island psychiatric hospital, turning in good, strong work. The problem, I think, is in the screenplay. There's simply too much of it.
Brevity, the old adage says, is the soul of wit. I would argue that, in a roundabout way, it's the soul of mystery too. It's not because if a mystery takes too long the audience starts looking for solutions, that's a part of the fun. It's because in a mystery there isn't much in the way of character development or story. Dramas have story, mysteries have plotting. A drama, like The Godfather, is about a character, Michael, and his story. It can go on for hours and multiple movies because the point isn't to figure out a solution, or have one revealed, but to delve deep into Michael's soul, or lack thereof. In a mystery, like Witness for the Prosecution, the point isn't to learn all about Sir Wilfred Robarts, but see if he can solve the mystery, or have it revealed to him. So if the plotting in a mystery, along with the requisite red herrings, goes on too long it starts to feel like just so much padding. The mistake of Shutter Island is that it thinks it's a drama instead of a mystery. I have even read reviews and comments in which it is stated that perhaps Scorsese didn't even care if the solution is let out of the bag early. If so then that lends support to my theory that this movie is mistaking what it is and what it's supposed to be.
Still, that confusion does not produce a bad movie. Visually striking and expertly paced it is, in fact, a very good movie. But for a mystery to examine character like a drama the mystery has to subvert itself to the character. Take Vertigo for example. It's a classic example of a drama that explores the psychological depths of its protagonist, John "Scotty" Ferguson as played by Jimmy Stewart, by involving him in a mystery. He is involved in the mystery by simply following a woman (Kim Novak) around and eventually starting up a relationship with her. The mystery is merely a way into Scotty's obsessions, which is the real subject at hand much like Close Encounters of the Third Kind is about Roy Neary's (Richard Dreyfuss) quest for meaning in his life and finding his place in the universe. That drama's "way in" is alien visitation. But Shutter Island has no such mission for its main character and thus, in continuing on and on with excessive plotting, starts to drain the life out of all the good things that are there. Let's use Vertigo once again to go at this from a different angle.
Imagine Vertigo starting at the point where Scotty has his nervous breakdown after the woman he was following falls to her death at the mission tower. Further imagine the movie runs for two and half hours from that point on as Scotty tries to solve the mystery of this new woman, Judy, who seems like a ghost from his past. And all of the buildup before the breakdown of knowing Scotty and who he is and his search for a connection to another wanderer? All of that, all of what came before, will simply be told in flashback at the end for five minutes. If you've seen Shutter Island that will make sense to you and if not, sorry for the confusion.
Martin Scorsese knows direction like geese know migration - it's in his blood, in his genes, it's who he is. There's never a point in Shutter Island where the viewer feels there is an unsteady hand at the helm and Scorsese draws us in quickly and efficiently. His skill continues to hold us there for quite some time but soon, even with all of his talent, we start to see the same trees, the same footprints, the same broken twigs and realize we're going in circles. From the opening shot of a ferry emerging from the mist there is a heavy sense of a story and characters moving relentlessly towards a doomed inevitability. By the end we're relieved that the doom has finally arrived but only in the abstract. Only because it has taken so long to get there with little in the way of anything about the characters developing into anything more than pieces of a puzzle. It wants to be a drama and a mystery and spends so much time trying to meld the two it ends up being neither. In the end, I half-heartedly recommend it but only for those interested in seeing the technical virtuosity of a now seasoned master of the cinema. Outside of that, I'd say you're better off staying on the mainland.
26 comments:
I have even read reviews and comments in which it is stated that perhaps Scorsese didn't even care if the solution is let out of the bag early...
That was me! I said that!
Well, obviously I disagree with you, but I also understand where you're coming from. Frankly, I can't really blame anyone for finding fault with SHUTTER ISLAND on a story level. I do not find the same faults, but this may be the first film with this kind of plot resolution that has every really worked for me. What I will concede to you, and your main point about length and padding, is that Patricia Clarkson's scene, by the time we get there, is entirely superfluous. I think I know why it's there -- one more particularly convincing red herring before the big reveal -- but even though it's hard for me to say for sure, knowing where the story was going, I think it would probably be best to continue on the line really begun by his inability to find at the bottom of the cliff what he thought he saw there. I loved the film, and during the Clarkson scene even I was thinking "Get on with it."
I am glad that you seem to have appreciated SHUTTER ISLAND on the level of imagery and atmosphere. I think that element of the film is absolutely unassailable, yet most of the negative criticism is directed there. I don't get that at all. It's a beautiful movie.
PS - How many people did you annoy by taking those pictures?
This is a movie I can't get too worked up about one way or the other but if you're right, and I have no reason to doubt you are, and the negative reviews are mainly aimed at the mood and visuals, then the current state of film criticism is worse than I thought.
The pacing, visual design and mood ARE this movie's strong points. To say otherwise is not watch the screen.
I read your review and honestly can't really disagree with you and what you like, I just didn't like it as much and found the padding to be the main fault. Like you said, the Clarkson scene is thoroughly unnecessary.
Oh and I didn't take those pictures. I downloaded a bootleg torrant because I was so tired of seeing the same pics on every review. The bootleg was clearly done with a camcorder. If anyone actually watches those things instead of going to the theatre they're idiots.
Greg -
I think you've really captured what bugged me about "Shutter Island." It was visually thrilling, well-made -but the story just seemed to go everywhere and I was never sure what was going on. (The fact that I nodded off at a key point, having slept very little the previous night, did not help matters.) A more streamlined plot might have made the whole thing really work for me.
But I've read so many really bad reviews that I'm mostly just happy to see both you and Bill acknowledge what's really good about "Shutter Island." Cause there's undeniably a lot of good stuff there.
Pat, there is a lot good about it. My problem lately in reviewing movies like this and Avatar is that my reaction seems mixed to middling. I like having stronger reactions to movies and was kind of annoyed at all the excess plotting because I'm with you, tighten it up and you've got a damn good mystery.
I have to say, Greg, that after thinking about it I really do take issue with your claim that drama is about character and mystery is about plot. Broadly, I would say that's true, but not only isn't it always true, but it shouldn't be true. At the very center of SHUTTER ISLAND's mystery is character. This film HAS to be about character, or it has no impact.
Outside of the Clarkson scene, what would you have cut?
At the very center of SHUTTER ISLAND's mystery is character. This film HAS to be about character, or it has no impact.
But it didn't have much impact for me, which is the point I guess. Perhaps you saw more character based story than I did.
Now that we're in the comment section I suppose we can let the spoilers fly.
SPOILERS
That paragraph in the review about starting Vertigo after Scotty has his breakdown is to me what Shutter Island does. It makes a mystery out of Andrew's psychotic break rather than deal with the story and character leading up to it. So instead of a good half a movie of seeing Scotty and Madeleine in Vertigo we just see Scotty in a catatonic state. With nothing before, the mystery is an empty exercise, to me, in figuring out how he got this way.
Since there is no real mystery, it is all imagined, the movie ends up as the equivalent of "it was all a dream." But in the meantime we haven't gotten to know Teddy/Andrew at all, just gone through the plotting. Then suddenly it's revealed, This is about Andrew! Well then, goddamit, give me a story about Andrew for the first two hours.
So to answer your question, I'd cut out most of the movie, put the Andrew/wife story first and reserve the last quarter maybe to dealing with the after-effects of the break. This is what I meant by it's a character movie trying to be a mystery. By trying to be a precisely plotted mystery it loses the great opportunity it had to develop a great character story.
I downloaded a bootleg torrant because I was so tired of seeing the same pics on every review.
Yeah, I'm so sick of those over-lit studio-released pictures for every new release. That's why I'm a grabber, friends... and why I rarely review new movies.
I do get sick of seeing the same damn pics on every review of every new movie. Torrents are usually pretty shitty quality so I never watch them as a first source but they are helpful once you've seen the film in the theater and need to go back to reference a scene or, in this case, put up a different picture.
I think studios should release a thousand or so frames online for each movie, like the Hitchcock wiki does for his films, and then critics can go through and pick out which ones they want to use.
Well, but while Scotty may have been in a catatonic state, Teddy clearly isn't. A good movie could have been made with the scenario you set up, but, in my view, a good movie was made anyway, so...
As for the images, I do know what you and Arbogast mean. Strangely, when I was putting together my/Dennis's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS posts, there were a lot of images to choose from, if you dug deeply enough -- Dennis found those great Bridget Von Hammersmarck posters, and I found, among other things, a moment from the tavern scene after the shit hits the fan -- but generally, yeah, it's hard to be original in that sense. I wasn't too pleased with what I could find for SHUTTER ISLAND.
When I was putting together my post on SAUNA, when I searched Google Image for "sauna film", the first couple of hits were huge spoilers. They were GREAT images, but I couldn't use them, because it would ruin the biggest and best horror image from the whole movie.
The images for Shutter Island are good ones too but there aren't that many. Considering how many great shots are in it I wish more were available online. Like that shot of the three of them looking over the cliff - what a great shot! I knew I wanted that shot but when I searched online I couldn't find it.
By the way, Scorsese does do a very good job with mood overall in the film I would say. As the film starts with the ferry ride straight through their ride up the hill to meet the head doctor I was really impressed by the relentless orchestral chords that kept pounding and building as we made our way up to the building.
I'll be curious to watch it again in a few months after I've let it all sink in once it's on DVD. Just to see how it plays knowing the whole solution. You did going in but I didn't. Maybe it will be better knowing.
One thing that kind of irritated me was the use of Dachau so prominently but then nothing important ends up being attached to it. I mean, I know the whole experimentation paranoia is attached to it, what I mean is, they could have had that without the camp being a part of Andrew's life. It felt a little dirty and exploitative to me in the end when I realized nothing was going to come from it.
The music was fantastic, I agree, especially that relentless chord. Wonderful stuff.
As for Dachau...I don't know, I didn't think it was quite as insignificant as you say. I mean, he comes home from that, to what we eventually find out happened to his family. That would all culminate in a pretty significant psychotic break in anyone, of a particularly horrific and helpless sort. It's part of the reason the movie had, and needed, the atmosphere it did.
I mean, he comes home from that, to what we eventually find out happened to his family.
But yeah, seven years later. I'm sure you're right and I'm being a hypocrite but he seems fine when arriving at the cabin until he discovers his children in the lake. The psychotic break comes from that alone I think. To me, Dachau is used as a red herring to get us thinking about experimentation on humans being conducted. At least that's how I'm seeing it and I guess using something that horrific in world history as a mere red herring feels a bit wrong.
Also, when he describes shooting the soldiers as murder, which I suppose it was, I felt the movie was veering dangerously close to forming some kind of moral equivalancy between that and the systematic slaughtering of European Jewry. One of the reasons I think I'm a little touchy on these things is that my wife's children from her first marriage have eleven family members on their father's side, including grandparents, aunts, uncles and so on, who were killed in death camps during the war and they still have living relatives who survived the camps as children. They were Latvian by the way.
But then I think how many real events are used all the time as backdrops that I don't mind. I don't know, I'm probably being too sensitive about it. I think Inglourious Basterds is brilliant and works because Tarantino keeps the specifics of the holocaust absent while understanding we wish those fuckers had met with some kind of justice instead of getting to take cyanide capsules or shoot themselves. The Holocaust is the reason that movie exists and why Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Marvin Heir of the Simon Wiesenthal Center fully endorsed it and its sense of emotional release.
Anyway, I'm just blathering at this point.
You're not blathering. Honestly, that "murder" line got my back up a little bit too, and for the same reasons (although without the personal link). But the film also clearly shows why it was done, and doesn't expect you -- at least I didn't think so -- to judge the Americans for what they did. Also, technically speaking, it WAS murder, and I would imagine that some Allied troops who did that sort of thing in WWII probably felt a bit conflicted about it. But, speaking personally, it's form of murder that I'm sort of okay with.
As far as the possible exploitation factor, all I can say is that, exploitation or not, if the film is good, I tend to not mind, or even notice. If the film is LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, then that's a different matter. It probably is hypocritical, but what the hell! We're human!
You're right, the better the film, the less I mind. Still even in a good film it can get to me or my wife. My wife and I, like most people I suspect who have actually given thought to the matter, have many conflicted thoughts about subjects like murdering the Nazis. There was a PBS doc a few years ago on Auschwitz and I can't remember the name of it but there's this incredible moment, among many, where a survivor is talking about this time on one of the trains when they overpowered a Nazi camp official of some sort and piled on him, just sat on him, until he was smothered to death. Then the survivor is asked by the documentary director how'd he feel about that and he says, "Who gives a shit, it was a Nazi. I was glad to kill him." Really, that moment and the casualness with which he responded, and the understanding of what kind of evil can make a moral person feel that way is all pretty powerful and intense.
We all have some sense of things like that I think. You may recall I have written about my uncle before who died at Iwo Jima. I wrote about it when I was still writing under a pseudonym but now that I'm not I can proudly send you here where the Marines list their dead in WWII. Scroll down to find Ferrara, Joseph L. He's listed as DOW, died of wounds. My brother's named after him. Anyway, and I've never written about this before, years ago, watching Thin Red Line I became incensed when the Japanese surrender. I've never had before or since that kind of visceral reaction to a movie. When they start coming out of their caves and foxholes, and they're frail and crying and the music is all heartbreaking and the American soldiers have been questioning their own actions in this war all along, I swear to you, at that moment, had I run into Terrence Mallick, I would've killed him. To this day, when someone tells me they really like that movie, on the outside I'm all cold and technical about discussing the ins and outs of the film, but inside, I get angry all over again.
Now, the important thing is, I know I'm taking it all very personally and it is very likely I may have misread the entire scene and/or movie. But whatever the case, I really don't ever want to see it again. It just fucking infuriated me. I've seen my father's pride when talking about his brother and to have my uncle's memory in any way attached to him being the bad guy, oh my God, it just makes me furious. So, yeah, it's irrational and way too personal I'm sure, but WWII is quickly becoming just another historical piece of trivia, just another dusty old event that movies can use as backdrops and that makes me kind of sad.
Frankly, you sound a lot like me, and I don't even have the personal ties to the war that you and your wife do. The scene in THE THIN RED LINE -- a movie I haven't seen in a while -- does, as I remember, have at least a bit of what made you so angry, but I think it's more of a "war sucks" tone than anything specific. I don't think it's saying "Look at what the US did to these poor Japanese soldiers." Which I think is a legitimate line to take, even in a WWII film. But what I find so interesting about that movie is that you have Nolte and Elias Koteas set up as polar opposites, one being a hard-ass combat vet who has a hard goddamn job to do, and he's going to fucking do it, and the other is hesitant about putting a single man under his command in any kind of danger. And the film doesn't judge either one. I think the consensus on the film's treatment of Nolte is that he's off the reservation, but I never saw it that way. Maybe I need to watch it again.
Anyway. Point is, I absolutely know where you're coming from, even if I don't always see the same things you do in a given film. And you have every reason -- as I don't need to tell you -- to be proud of your uncle. God bless 'im.
Thanks Bill. I've always suspected I'm letting my personal feelings interfere with my reading of Thin Red Line but my personal feelings tainted memory still recalls it in a very bad light.
I'd say the ending doesn't matter as much as the film itself but that the film itself isn't good enough to carry the weight of an ending that doesn't matter as much.
Well said! I agree! That's my assessment of the movie.
By the end we're relieved that the doom has finally arrived but only in the abstract. Only because it has taken so long to get there with little in the way of anything about the characters developing into anything more than pieces of a puzzle.
Also well said. I appreciated the films elements but I was disappointed because I knew where the film was going, it took so long to get there, and it wasn't an ending I wanted out of this experience.
Hokahey, the more I think about it, the more it feels like The Game to me. That movie frustrated me because it had this exciting mysterious underworld playing out and then as we approached the ending I remember thinking, "Please tell me they're not actually going to just make this all a game. They're not, right?" And then they did. I've always thought how incredible the film could have been had it really been about what was going on in the game itself.
Same here. I felt it should either be a non-mystery about Andrew and his psychotic break or be a mystery about the island actually being a shadowy conspiratorial organization. But, alas, they went the Game option.
Ah, yet another fantastically entertaining movie can't quite get anyone in these parts excited.
I disagree completely with the tag line here that has been seconded by this fine group of cinephiles, and I point to the excellent response to the film from my close blogging associates.
Two much of the screenplay?
Perhaps, but I loved it all--the atmospheric scenes in the lighthouse, the cemetery burial vault, the cafeteria, the cave etc. I saw it a second time days after I had seen it the first, and it held up marvelously, despite the cat being out of the bag.
Greg, actually to respond to your original response to Bill R., YES those points ARE the film's strongest qualities, although I think some here are mistaken thinking the film received strong "anti" notices. It's more like 65% favorable and 35% negative for what it's worth.
This film was so much fun, and so cinematically ravishing that frankly I just don't wanna hear the nitpicking. I am prepared to go to the mat here! Ha!
Now I am NOT mad at you, nor looking to turn the dialogue contentious, I just want to come to a thread and give a bit of a wake up call.
I think the beauty of the entire movie is you don’t know how to feel and you don’t know which to believe. You are very much in the mind of Leo’s character. Paranoid and stuck between two different things that both could very much be true. I called it very early on. The fact that it didn’t show him anywhere else but the Ferry and the Island. He has experienced Trauma. The Doctor said he does experimental procedures. Patients seemed coached. Just met his partner. And there wasn’t much to the movie unless he was crazy. Frankly, practically from the beginning I just felt that’s the only way it could have been.
Ah, yet another fantastically entertaining movie can't quite get anyone in these parts excited.
Sam, thanks for implying that I just don't like entertaining movies. Obviously while I don't find it "fantastically entertaining" I also don't find it bad. If you go back to my review you will in fact find the two sentences "Still, that confusion does not produce a bad movie. Visually striking and expertly paced it is, in fact, a very good movie."
But no one seems to have noticed that in the review so far so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it.
I think I explain my "nitpicks" quite well and logically in my review and I will let what I have written stand in my defense.
paekiss, I actually didn't figure it out until nearer the end when the movie has given you enough to go on that you can. I very much look forward to seeing it again on DVD when it's released to see what my reaction is knowing the story going in.
Greg, c'mon man have a sense of humor! I am ribbing you in my traditional way. When I love a movie i take my prisoners. If you saw me in person you'd know my routine.
LOL!
I do genuinely like the movie a lot, but I have seen both sides here.
"take no prisoners."
typo.
Sam, no worries. If I came off as too touchy I apologize.
You've hit the nail on the head. Thank you! I couldn't figure out what bothered me so much about this movie - such a relief.
I watched it last night and at the end I was so angry that I thought the movie was a total piece of crap. Ooo no, Scorsese does a cheap 'it's not real, the protagonist is insane' trick. Come on, we've had enough of this. Please let Teddy be sane, and let this island be the nazi-experimental horror place that it's supposed to be at the beginning. Wouldn't make for a great movie too, apart from the mood and setting, but at least I wouldn't have invested all my time in an insane person. Whom I should have cared about, but didn't because the movie starts as a mystery and I don't give a shit about the detective.
I was so angry that I missed the real impact of the last minutes, which is the emotional impact. I went to the imdb-boards and got winded up in the million sane-insane threads.
First I was still looking for evidence that he was sane. Because I also didn't like that in the end the doctors were supposed to be these caring people, when clearly mental institutions in the fifties, and before, were horrible places where horrible things happened. The analogy with nazi's is not off to me. But it's far from original, and Shutter Island would be half critique half horror story.
Then I got into the emotional impact of the last minutes, where we are made to feel for Teddy/Andrew. Suddenly he turns out as a severely traumatized person, and the whole movie is about what trauma can do to a person. This is far more emotional and deep then the sane-conspiracy approach. Plus it does justice to mental patients, who always have imho a real trauma that pushes them into insanity. This would make for a realistic character study, much closer to Scorceses other work (actually pretty close to King of Comedy - another traumatized figure that can't face reality).
I decided to watch it again, in this emotional vein, but when I got up this morning I asked myself: but what will I know more of Andrew on second viewing? I still have to go through 2 hours of mystery/horror? What's there to gain? I still have to drag through all the red herrings, go along with them, or at best admire the intricacies of the misleading plot on an intellectual level. But I don't want to, there is no emotional stimulus.
I also agree that Dachau is unnecessary as a background for Andrews insanity. It made him drink, okay (there are more reasons to drink), but having your wife kill your children is far more traumatic than shooting SS-ers who killed thousands and thousands of people. This would only be necessary for the conspiracy-horror story. But that one is abandoned with the end of the movie. So now it ends up as being only a red herring. That annoys me too, and makes a second viewing less desirable.
The end scene of this movie is beautiful I think, haunting, very eerie, with the shot of the lighthouse and the horn booming three times. If only we could have had the chance to get attached to Andrew, to know his story, from a sane perspective.
So, did you get to a second viewing?
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