Shutter Island - "Valuable things have a way of being misunderstood"...

I was scared before I ever stepped foot into the theatre to see Shutter Island, the latest endeavor from one of the most recognizable directors of the last 40 years, Martin Scorsese.

I wasn’t scared that Shutter Island would move my bowels, but rather churn my stomach.

You see, Shutter Islands release date was pushed back several months due to the “economic downturn”, according to Paramount. This led me to believe that the film would prove to be less than good. With an $80 million budget for the film and at least $60 million budgeted for marketing was Paramount just hoping to delay a huge Scorsese flop following his well deserved Academy award winning best picture, 2006’s The Departed?

Shutter Island stars Leonardo Dicaprio as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels. Teddy and his partner, Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo, (one of the more underrated actors of the past 10 years) are sent to a remote island off the coast of Massachusetts that houses some of the most violent and insane inmates, err, patients. Strange things are afoot on Shutter Island and Teddy is dead set on getting to the bottom of it.

There are several storylines to follow here;
1) the missing patient who seems to have “evaporated straight through the walls”,

2) the real motivation for his deceitful decent upon the island, Andrew Ladise, an inmate that changed Teddy’s life forever, thus raising the stakes of the film, and

3) inmate 67. Is inmate 67 Ladise? Does inmate 67 exist? Is there a connection between Ladise and Ted Daniels? There is a lot to be explored here.

The first act of the film was a bit much for me to stomach, I will admit. The score is overbearing, the dialog, on the nose, and the mood, well, Scorsese is a master at his craft and I felt like he wasn’t trusting us to understand what he was setting up, which I was taking personally, but you don’t give up on Scorsese. At 2 hours and 18 minutes it was a lot to endure, especially some of the more ridiculous moments that seemed even more dubious given the climax, but I digress.

Consequentialism dear Watson, consequentialism. Here, more than any other film I’ve seen in the recent past, the ends most certainly justify the means. In the true Aristotelian understanding, what I experienced in the theatre, along with the sold out crowd was a catharsis. I could see the ending coming, or at least had my suspicions from early on, but when push came to shove, I didn’t care. The climax was handled delicately. It wasn’t rushed, pulling us in and allowing us to live in the moment rather than feeling removed from it. Bravo.

Today, I feel like I told a really offensive joke to a group of people who, rather than laughing, asked me to leave. I had my doubts, sheepishly I admit, I was wrong about Shutter Island.

My Vote: It’s no gangster flick, but even Henry Hill could see the value in Scorseses’ understanding of plot and tone and how they can make or break the movie-going experience.