Shutter Island (2010)

Shutter Island (2010)

Country: USA

Production Company: Paramount Pictures presents a Phoenix Pictures production, in association with Sikelia Productions and Appian Way

Producers: Mike Medavoy, Arnold W Messer, Bradley J Fisher, Martin Scorcese

Executive Producers: Chris Brigham, Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane, Gianni Nunnari, Louis Phillips

Co-Producers: Joseph Reidy, Emma Tillinger, Amy Herman

Director: Martin Scorcese

Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane

Cinematographer: Robert Richardson

Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

Production Designer: Dante Ferretti

Costume Designer: Sandy Powell

Music Supervisor: Robbie Robertson

Visual Effects: Rob Legato

Special Effects: Rick Thompson

Special Makeup Effects: Stan Winston Studios/Michael Ornelaz

Sound: Philip Stockton, Eugene Gearty

Stunts: Blaise Corrigan

Title Designer: Randall Balsmeyer

Running Time: 138 mins.

Locations: Medfield State Hospital, Wilson Mountain Reservation, Acadia National Park, Borderland State Park, Massachusetts.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule), Ben Kingsley (Dr Cawley), Max von Sydow (Dr Naehring), Michelle Williams (Dolores), Emily Mortimer (Rachel 1), Patricia Clarkson (Rachel 2), Jackie Earle Haley (George Noyce), Ted Levine (Warden), John Carroll Lynch (Deputy Warden McPherson), Elias Koteas (Laeddis), Robin Bartlett (Bridget Kearns), Christopher Denham (Peter Breene), Nellie Sciutto (Nurse Marino), Joseph Sikora (Glen Miga), Curtiss I'Cook (Trey Washington), Raymond Anthony Thomas (Orderly Ganton), Joseph McKenna (Inmate Billings), Ruby Jerins (Little Girl), Tom Kemp, Bates Wilder (Ward C Guards), Lars Gerhard (Dying Commandant), Matthew Cowles (Ferry Captain), Jill Larson (Manacled Woman), Ziad Akl (Tattooed Man).

Synopsis: Boston, 1954. US Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are sent to investigate a missing female inmate at Ashecliffe Asylum on an island in Boston Harbor. The employees and inmates of the facility, run by Doctors Cawley and Naehring, treat the interlopers with suspicion and appear to have been coached in their responses. As the search for the girl unravels, Daniels, haunted by the death of his wife and his experience liberating the concentration camp at Dachau, becomes openly hostile as he begins to suspect the patients are subject to experimental procedures, and reveals an ulterior motive for requesting assignment to the case…

Review: Largely viewed as Martin Scorsese's return to his B-Movie roots, Shutter Island arrives as yet another delayed major studio release, albeit held over just four months from October of 2009, due to Paramount's ongoing financial problems. Based on Dennis Lehane's brilliant exercise in pulp, the film is a twisted nightmare of unreliable narration, gothic angles, hurricane-force storms, infanticide, and deep, tormenting guilt, with elements of The Wicker Man, Shyamalan, Sam Fuller, Val Lewton and Hitchcock, that make for a mind-twisting, if not entirely satisfying, upscale psychological potboiler.

All the familiar Scorcese elements are here, Leonardo DiCaprio, in his fourth collaboration with the director, is intense in that slightly distancing way of his, and receives able support from Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac) as his partner, Ben Kingsley and Max on Sydow as the suspicious doctors (the former on top form, with clipped Simon Cowell-like intonation), and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) as his dead wife.

Cinematography and Production Design from Robert Richardson (Natural Born Killers, The Aviator, Inglourious Basterds) and Dante Ferretti (Interview with the Vampire, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd) are exemplary, Thelma Shoonmaker builds appreciable tension, showing why she's edited all Scorcese's films since Raging Bull, and Robbie Robertson curates a fine collection of ominous and emotional music from Mahler, John Adams, György Ligeti (a Kubrick favorite), Brian Eno and Max Richter (do yourself a favor and stay for the closing titles), which only overplays its hand (a fault of Scorcese's last flirtation with terror, Cape Fear), in the use of the overly-portentous "Passacaglia" from Penderecki's Symphony No. 3 as the two Marshals first approach the gates of the asylum.

As ever with Scorcese, it's the scrupulously faceted density of this world that lifts Shutter Island above the run-of-the-mill. Not least in a parade of small but incredible effective performances that add depth to the story and cause the viewer to constantly question its direction. John Carroll Lynch (Fargo, Zodiac) as the stalwart but oddly threatening Deputy Warden, Emily Mortimer (Transsiberian) as the missing murderess, Jackie Earl Haley (Watchmen, the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) particularly effective as an inmate from Daniels' past, Patricia Clarkson (The Woods) as an escapee holed up in a cliffside cave, Elias Koteas (The Haunting in Connecticut), looking like DeNiro's Frankenstein monster as Teddy's nemesis, all deserve praise but Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs) practically steals the film in one key scene as the deeply twisted prison Warden.

Period is evoked perfectly from the shadows of World War II – flashbacks to Dachau and a resultant mistrust of Germans – to 1950s fear and suspicion surrounding nuclear weapons and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as the costume design of Sandy Powell (Oscar-winner for The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love) and the spot-on cadence of the leads.

If there are weaknesses, they lie in the screenplay of Laeta Kalogridis (Night Watch, Pathfinder, Cameron's Battle Angel), with certain elements explained twice and a too-soon realization of the story arc, as well as, in Scorcese and Shoonmaker's court, a hurried pace to the last 15 minutes with a surprising lack of emotional impact to the final revelation.

There's also a feeling that Kalogridis and Scorcese have over-intellectualized the material - a little less about the duality of man and the nature of violence might have tightened the structure and led to a more satisfying thriller. Scorcese's early mentor, Roger Corman, once said that every film could be improved by cutting 20 minutes and adding an exploding helicopter, one can't help feeling that in this case Scorcese should have paid heed.

These deficits, however are counteracted by a wealth of detail that bears repeated viewing, with every character quirk and fumble, each drop of water and lit match proving to have resonance in the end. And the sense that Shutter Island may, in time, fit into Scorcese's canon the way that The Shining complements Kubrick's.

Shutter Island was released in the US on February 19th, 2010 and receives a UK premiere on 12th March.