Shutter Island, the latest Martin Scorsese's offering, is an impressive work of art. This one digresses from a regular Scorsese's film noir to a psychedelic drama unfolding onto itself. Without giving away spoilers I will try to be as honest as I can in scribing my findings.
The story takes place in circa 1954 beckoning to the avant-garde B-Movie productions during the cold war era. Di Caprio as a U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels, teams up with Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule) to investigate the disappearance of a female prisoner from a mental hospital on an island in Massachusetts. Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital is a psychiatric facility housing dangerous criminals managed by a surreptitious staff of doctors and nurses. Ben Kingsley as Dr. John Cawley, plays the menacing Hospital's chief psychiatrist and administrator with suppressed grit and wistfulness. He along with one of the hospital's top physicians, a nazi Dr. Jeremiah Naehring (played by Max Von Sydow) cast enough suspicions on the marshals to dig a little deeper into the Houdini-esque escape of the murderess. The presence of mysterious light tower and unaccounted prisoners further complicate Teddy's analysis. Whats more, there is a personal crises that Ted Daniels is impaled with. He suffers from post traumatic experiences as a war veteran and a widower who loses his wife to a violent inferno. He day dreams and hallucinates of his wife and, fountains of dead bodies, from concentration camps he helped demolish to liberate Jews.
His war history travels with him, portending him of a devilish scheme funded by the Government that might lead to the creation of the "Ghost People", the kind he had seen Germans create to exterminate their fiends. He is convinced of the wrongdoings and in one of his encounters on the Isle learns about a supposed lobotomy, an operation that tweaks the sensory nerves in the brain studying their impact on emotions like love, grief, pain and longing, inflicting unbearable pain on the operand, which could transform insane to dead or to a life, devoid of any emotions. Such aghast is the doom that anyone prescribed would have to be seriously challenged.
Scorsese shows multiple movies in a single movie. He infuses delicate back projection camera work seen in many of the Hitchcock's works, reminiscing of the "vertigo-ian" image stretching techniques. Technicalities notwithstanding, Scorsese keeps on adding layers of unwitting occurrences which seem to confound Teddy in the beginning, but as we go along, wrap around him like a cocoon. He looses his identity and the distinction between sanity and insanity becomes unclear. Unrequited with the Shutter Island and his own dilemma, Teddy fathoms deadly storms and the nightmarish woods to get a reality check that seals his fate. At a running length of over 2 hours, the movie serves quite a tale and the climax is worth the wait. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, together have delivered some amazing performances over the years. This one is yet another addition to the wonder that this combination is.
The story takes place in circa 1954 beckoning to the avant-garde B-Movie productions during the cold war era. Di Caprio as a U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels, teams up with Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule) to investigate the disappearance of a female prisoner from a mental hospital on an island in Massachusetts. Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital is a psychiatric facility housing dangerous criminals managed by a surreptitious staff of doctors and nurses. Ben Kingsley as Dr. John Cawley, plays the menacing Hospital's chief psychiatrist and administrator with suppressed grit and wistfulness. He along with one of the hospital's top physicians, a nazi Dr. Jeremiah Naehring (played by Max Von Sydow) cast enough suspicions on the marshals to dig a little deeper into the Houdini-esque escape of the murderess. The presence of mysterious light tower and unaccounted prisoners further complicate Teddy's analysis. Whats more, there is a personal crises that Ted Daniels is impaled with. He suffers from post traumatic experiences as a war veteran and a widower who loses his wife to a violent inferno. He day dreams and hallucinates of his wife and, fountains of dead bodies, from concentration camps he helped demolish to liberate Jews.
His war history travels with him, portending him of a devilish scheme funded by the Government that might lead to the creation of the "Ghost People", the kind he had seen Germans create to exterminate their fiends. He is convinced of the wrongdoings and in one of his encounters on the Isle learns about a supposed lobotomy, an operation that tweaks the sensory nerves in the brain studying their impact on emotions like love, grief, pain and longing, inflicting unbearable pain on the operand, which could transform insane to dead or to a life, devoid of any emotions. Such aghast is the doom that anyone prescribed would have to be seriously challenged.
Scorsese shows multiple movies in a single movie. He infuses delicate back projection camera work seen in many of the Hitchcock's works, reminiscing of the "vertigo-ian" image stretching techniques. Technicalities notwithstanding, Scorsese keeps on adding layers of unwitting occurrences which seem to confound Teddy in the beginning, but as we go along, wrap around him like a cocoon. He looses his identity and the distinction between sanity and insanity becomes unclear. Unrequited with the Shutter Island and his own dilemma, Teddy fathoms deadly storms and the nightmarish woods to get a reality check that seals his fate. At a running length of over 2 hours, the movie serves quite a tale and the climax is worth the wait. Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, together have delivered some amazing performances over the years. This one is yet another addition to the wonder that this combination is.
