Shutter Island

When an Oscar-winning director takes on genre fare, you know you’re in store for something much more meaningful than disposable entertainment. That’s exactly the case with Martin Scorsese’s ‘Shutter Island’, a visually rich and engrossing experience that works as a mystery thriller as well as something much deeper and delivers on both fronts.

Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives to Shutter Island – an asylum for the insane – with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer) without any trace at all. As he questions Dr. Crawley (Ben Kingsley) and the inmates, he realizes something much darker is being hidden from him. Something that may mean he will never leave the island alive.

In the hands of anyone else, this could easily have been a thruway thriller filled with jump scares and gimmicky plot twists. But in the hands of veteran director Martin Scorsese and greatly complemented by a dynamic performance by Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island transcends into something more as the film comes to an end. It becomes a film that sparks thought over its ending and urges you to re-watch the film to understand all the things you might have missed. I will keep my review completely spoiler free even though the twist ending is something you can probably predict mid-movie. But the fact is that Shutter Island is not about the twist. In fact, the twist is executed in a pretty deadpan manner (unlike flashy edits and score a la ‘Saw’). It’s about all the lead-up that helps make complete sense of out a slightly implausible ending.

Atmosphere is where the film scores. Shutter Island is meant to be home for the demented and that fear and creepiness is effectively conveyed throughout the movie. As Teddy enters the gates of the asylum, there’s no denying that there’s something sinister with the place and credit goes to Scorsese for the brilliant imagery and scenery that bring a fictional location to life. When talking about the visuals, one has to mention the dazzling dream sequences in the film. Momentarily throughout the film, Teddy has surreal visions of his wife and his World War 2 days. And these sequences end up being the most chilling sequences of the year as lines between dreams and reality slowly begin to blur.

While all that work in terms of providing a nail-biting thriller, something in the movie makes a much deeper experience. In particular, it’s the very last line of the film. Without spoiling anything, the last lines add a whole new layer to the film’s narrative and make you question every single thing that happened up to that point and works as a ‘double twist’ only very unpredictable this time. It’s bound to spark debate over its interpretation, but its details like these that make Shutter Island much more than standard genre fare.

DiCaprio gives an intense performance that brings out the fear and overwhelming emotions the character would be feeling. Mark Ruffalo is subtle as the partner while Ben Kingsley plays a shrewd doctor effectively. Jackie Earl Haley plays an inmate in the craziest manner possible, but he is probably the only actor in the industry who can pull it off regardless.

If there’s one flaw to be found, it’s the length of the film. Or the length of the dialogue sequences in the first act in particular. The audience is overwhelmed with an overload of information within the first twenty minutes through extremely long dialogue takes so much so that it’s hard to keep up. Trimming down the conversations would’ve tightened the pace of the film a little bit.

But Shutter Island is a movie that must be experienced by anyone looking for an engrossing mystery by one of the best working actor-director duos in Hollywood. It’s chilling, cleverly plotted and has more depth than visible on first sight. Definitely the best movie of the year so far.

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