# Scorsese's Shutter Island postponed until February 2010: a bad sign? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 24, 2009, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470 "2009-08-24T05:09:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/61 "2010-02-28T21:35:16Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > Opinions are what separates us from the primates; we’ve been armchair critics undoubtedly since the days when we drew on caves. (“I think I can draw a better mastodon than that hack.”) > > And I have to say that I get confused when some people take criticism so personally. Because I think a film dragged on doesn’t mean that I’m incapable or unwilling to focus for over 80 minutes. If a scene advances the plot, I’m fine with it. But it has to serve a purpose. The scenes where Edward was trying to get to the lighthouse, for instance, could have been edited down quite a bit, IMO. That’s when it started bogging down. Scorsese was going for suspense and mystery, not tedium. Suspense is all about the pace. I actually think that particular scene served its purpose well. It’s when “Teddy” really began to have his break with reality, when his delusions became foregrounded and reality became muddled and lost. The camera lingers with Teddy so long, marking each step in his decision making process, that as viewers we don’t have any chance at objectivity. There’s no way “in” to say that Chuck absolutely didn’t fall off the cliff, to say that the intake form didn’t almost fly away, to say that the rats weren’t really there, and finally to say that he didn’t really meet with Rachel. It’s only in hindsight that we see that all or nearly all of things we were shown _didn’t actually happen_. That section didn’t drag. That section showed us what it was like to see the world through Teddy’s eyes and live his delusion. Also, I think that whole sequence, from the moment he walks away from Chuck to the moment he is picked up in the Jeep, owes a great deal to Hitchcock. You mention suspense, but Hitchcock, the master of suspense, shot long sequences exactly like that. In a few places, it even _looked_ like a shot Hitchcock would have put together, especially when he’s down near the water. But I’m not convinced he was going for suspense at all. I don’t think that this is a suspense/horror film anymore than **Taxi Driver** was a crime thriller or **Raging Bull** was a sport movie. It’s placed inside a specific genre for expedience’s sake, but Scorsese wouldn’t have considered himself restricted to the current language and expectations of that genre. That’s part of what makes his films so great, IMHO. He is a scholar of film and probably knows more than all of us in this thread put together, and he’s comfortable moving beyond generic boundaries to tell the stories that he’s interested in telling. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2010, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/62 "2010-03-01T08:38:59Z")
Finally convinced my friend to see this with me. He had been put off by what seems like an excessive amount of advertising (which I guess paid off - the movie opened fairly strong - although I can’t figure out how it cost $80 million!). I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part, although of course, As noted in my earlier post, I guessed the basic twist from the trailer. But to it’s credit, up until he fired the gun, I wasn’t convinced I was right - and also, the final twist of him pretending to revert was brilliant and chilling. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2010, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/63 "2010-03-01T08:46:23Z")
One thing I kind of wish they did: Although it’s a conventional technique, the twist was a common trope anyway so I think it would have been good - right after he realizes what really going on and has his tragic flashback, it would have been nice to also have brief flashes of the events of the movie itself from the perspective of reality - him handing over a fake gun, talking to no one in the cave, etc. Similar to how in Fight Club we see the main guy fighting with the air instead of Tyler Durden…It would have been interesting to see which things were ‘real’ and which were hallucinated… ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/64 "2010-03-02T18:13:28Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > Also, I think that whole sequence, from the moment he walks away from Chuck to the moment he is picked up in the Jeep, owes a great deal to Hitchcock. You mention suspense, but Hitchcock, the master of suspense, shot long sequences exactly like that. And yet all but one of his films in his entire career managed to be shorter than _Shutter Island_. > [@](#): > > Sorry to pick on you PunditLisa, but when did we as moviegoers all become wannabe editors? Practically every movie over 80 minutes, you’ll hear someone say “it was too long.” Why? Has our attention span really gotten that bad? You have somewhere to be? If so, why did you go to the movies? You want to pay more for your ticket, the way ticket prices are nowadays, yet willingly get less movie for the buck? A long movie is a good value. A long Scorsese movie is an extra value. Savor it. Enjoy it. Admire the extra details. And to assume that everyone who complains about movie length suffers from ADD is a reductive response to a legitimate criticism. Some movies need to be played out slowly and benefit from taking a methodical, even leisurely, pace to suit its specific purposes. But not every film. Some films are just too long–symptomatic of directors who feel that everything they want to express is worth expressing. Valuing economy in storytelling is a good thing, and suggesting judicious cutting is sometimes more than kneejerk impatience. And even as good a filmmaker as Scorsese is not immune to indulgences. ---
**Author:** ![jacquilynne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jacquilynne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacquilynne)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/65 "2010-03-02T18:25:52Z")
My bookclub read the book last month, so went to the movie this month, and we’d probably have liked the movie a lot better if we hadn’t already read the book. Instead of sinking into the plot, most of us spent the time spotting the fair play clues from the book. Well, that and whispering snark comments about whoever overproduced the soundtrack. We universally did not care for the ambiguity of the last line in the movie. It had ‘studio note’ written all over it. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2010, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/66 "2010-03-03T19:02:37Z")
Pretty good film. Am I the only one who thought it borrowed very heavily from: [Angel Heart](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092563/)? Right down to the lead character having a phobia relating to his forgotten past. I noticed it also borrowed from _The Sixth Sense_ the little touch of having something bright red in the room when his wife’s “ghost” appears. And it borrowed from _L.A. Confidential_ by using the song [Wheel of Fortune (Kay Starr)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjDJQrBusg) to creepy effect. I guess I’m saying Scorsese borrowed quite a lot for this film. Still very entertaining. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2010, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/67 "2010-03-03T19:22:01Z")
Come to think of it, the film also borrows from: [A Beautiful Mind](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/), with the imagined government conspiracy and the fully-realized imagined characters and the psychosis-from-the-inside approach. > [@aldiboronti](#): > > I thought this was a strange decision by the director but later Ben Kingsley reveals that although Di Caprio’s character was at Dachau the shooting of the guards may have been imagined. Also, Dachau was liberated on April 29, not in the dead of winter as depicted in the film. This was also a clue (albeit an obscure one) that Teddy’s memory of the event was not reliable. Or maybe it was just artistic license. 🙂 The falling snow echoed the falling paper and later in the film the storm-blown debris. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/68 "2010-03-04T08:03:33Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Also, Dachau was liberated on April 29, not in the dead of winter as depicted in the film. Was it clearly snow? At the time I got the impression it was ash. ---
**Author:** ![jacquilynne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/67e7ee/32.png) [@jacquilynne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacquilynne)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/69 "2010-03-04T14:13:07Z")
Some of the people on the ground were frozen in ice. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/70 "2010-03-04T15:29:26Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Come to think of it, the film also borrows from: And also Momento. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/71 "2010-03-04T22:01:55Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Come to think of it, the film also borrows from: > > [A Beautiful Mind](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/), with the imagined government conspiracy and the fully-realized imagined characters and the psychosis-from-the-inside approach. > > Also, Dachau was liberated on April 29, not in the dead of winter as depicted in the film. This was also a clue (albeit an obscure one) that Teddy’s memory of the event was not reliable. The large “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from Auschwitz being shown at the entrance to Dachau was another… ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/72 "2010-03-05T00:53:06Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > The large “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign from Auschwitz being shown at the entrance to Dachau was another… I thought so too, but it turns out [Dachau had a similar sign](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dachau-003edit.jpg). Oh and it was definitely winter at Dachau in the film. Aside from the snow and the frozen bodies, the soldiers were heavily bundled against the cold. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2010, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/73 "2010-03-05T02:05:21Z")
Oh, I know Dachau had one (many of the camps did), but the fact that he “remembered” the sign as the one from Auschwitz (which is more famous) indicates that his memories were less than reliable. Either that or the cinematographer / director thought no one would know the difference… ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/74 "2010-03-13T23:55:30Z")
I saw the film this afternoon and also noticed the Arbeit Macht Frei sign as being out of place. I hope the shot of that sign was added on purpose to show the unreliability of the memory, because as soon as he said he was at Dachau, I thought it was a huge gaffe on part of the filmmakers, like they think Americans wouldn’t get that it was the Holocaust unless they showed that sign. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2010, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/75 "2010-03-15T13:56:25Z")
**jacquilynne** , thanks for bringing that up - the soundtrack was bombastic, wasn’t it? My husband and I rolled our eyes at each other whenever they ratcheted it back up to 11 again. Really takes you out of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![gladtobeblazed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/85f322/32.png) [@gladtobeblazed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gladtobeblazed)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/76 "2010-03-17T10:12:37Z")
I thought this movie was one of Scorses’s worst. Dull and predictable. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/77 "2010-03-18T01:39:03Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > Also, I think that whole sequence, from the moment he walks away from Chuck to the moment he is picked up in the Jeep, owes a great deal to Hitchcock. You mention suspense, but Hitchcock, the master of suspense, shot long sequences exactly like that. In a few places, it even _looked_ like a shot Hitchcock would have put together, especially when he’s down near the water. [A _Guardian_ blog](http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/martin-scorcese-shutter-island-hitchcock) essentially suggested a “Hitchcock bingo” drinking game for watching _Shutter Island_. Personally, the _Psycho_ shower-head and _Spellbound_ gun-view references leapt out as blatently deliberate. I did wonder to what extent Scorsese was signalling the suggestion that most of Hitchcock’s material was just such nonsense and he was a genius, remember? The film did seem slowly paced given the story. DiCaprio just spends an awful lot of time thrashing around, getting nowhere. Given the solution, this is technically justifiable, but it doesn’t feel like that as the plot unfolds. Thus the script sets up a classic “locked room” mystery, which it only solves by dismissing it. Since quite a lot of the set-up reminded me of _The Name of the Rose_, I was struck by the thought that at least Eco would have played fair to the extent of providing some solution to that puzzle. This might have turned out wrong in the grander reality of the plot, but he would at least have confused matters by having the detective figure out how it could have happened. As it is, the film basically just mystifies until the ending. Which is then exactly the one that I had suspected from the trailler. The surrounding mechanics did distract from his performance on first viewing, but I suspect it’s actually a hell of a bit of work from DiCaprio. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/78 "2010-03-28T07:59:55Z")
I finally saw this and my initial judgment is that this is definitely lesser Scorsese. The last 1/4 are rather muddled. One thing I wonder about. If “Teddy’s” government-backed mind control/brainwashing conspiracy is his delusion, what was his source for the fantasy? The story is set in 1954 and “Teddy” has already been there for two years. Were there any allegations or stories in the media about such experiments being conducted with the CIA’s or FBI’s involvement during the early 50s? I could be wrong but it was my understanding that this information wasn’t found out by the public until years later. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/79 "2010-03-29T19:25:11Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > I finally saw this and my initial judgment is that this is definitely lesser Scorsese. The last 1/4 are rather muddled. > > One thing I wonder about. If “Teddy’s” government-backed mind control/brainwashing conspiracy is his delusion, what was his source for the fantasy? The story is set in 1954 and “Teddy” has already been there for two years. Were there any allegations or stories in the media about such experiments being conducted with the CIA’s or FBI’s involvement during the early 50s? I could be wrong but it was my understanding that this information wasn’t found out by the public until years later. Okay, no replies. It was probably a big red herring that I was thinking too much about. ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470/80 "2010-03-31T13:57:51Z")
I REALLY need to watch Fight Club before I end up spoilering myself. It’s really a miracle I haven’t already. Just watched Shutter Island. It was pretty intense and I wasn’t sure about the ending until the very very end. But just once I’d like to watch a movie about an insane asylum where it turns out the protagonist isn’t a freakin’ inmate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scorseses-shutter-island-postponed-until-february-2010-a-bad-sign/507470.md?page=5)