I saw it too and really liked it. I thought it was much better than the book. And the cinematography is fantastic.
Count us as two more who really liked this movie.
It was captivating - in every respect - from the first moments.
The Las Vegas Weekly - your usual free rag with young, know-it-all grad student film reviewers who hate everything, actually gave it a 4 out of 5; I think that is the highest rating they have given a film in a decade. Almost made me NOT want to see it.
This is a film that grows on you - both while you are watching it and afterward, when you start thinking about it. I think in future film books, it will easily rank in the top films from Scorsese.
I miss the passionate intensity of the early Scorsese, when movies like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull seared themselves into your brain and De Niro’s acting gripped you by the throat and wouldn’t let go. I guess it’s inevitable, the difference between youth and age.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved this film and enjoyed every minute of it, but it isn’t a great movie, I’m not sure whether Scorsese has any of those left in him. (I read that De Niro and he have announced that they’re working on another mob movie together, maybe that will provide the spark.)
On the whole Shutter Island is a workmanlike and well-directed film although there was one scene which troubled me at first. It’s the one in which Di Caprio’s character is remembering the liberation of Dachau and the shooting of the camp guards. The guards are lined up by the fence opposite a line of US troops who open fire and mow them down. But the shooting is synchronised to the panning of the camera along the line; as the camera moves along the guards in view are shot and fall. It’s like a row of dominos falling and is completely unrealistic.
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. Scorsese may well have filmed the scene thus as a hint to the audience that this was unreal. If so, it was a clever move.
I thought it was OK. This setting and genre of this movie has been done quite a bit. In this case it is at least done well, although nothing extraordinarily new is brought to the table. I absolutely loved the last line of the movie.
I too was bothered by the guards being shot scene as well. As opposed to aldi I don’t think it was clever, even if it was meant as a hint that it was not real. It just totally jarred me out of the movie which is never a good thing.
Agreed with Equipoise, great post. Mildly obsessive - sounds like something I would do!
I’m going to see Shutter Island tonight and am now excited beyond words!
It was like the scene where Teddy was raising up the stairs in the lighthouse. It was shot so that it looked like he was running but the stairs weren’t moving, so he was running in place. It wasn’t meant to reflect a realistic relationship between space and time. In fact, there were many, many shots like that throughout the movie–most of them were small moments that could have been editing mistakes. They weren’t, though. They were about showing how delusional Teddy was, and the disconnect his brain had with reality. The doctor later said “You may have murdered guards.” Which means that his “memory” might have been like so many other “memories” in the film, something he created.
One additional thing I like about this film is that it puts you right into Teddy’s mind. He’s crazy, he’s tormented, he’s delusional, and we have to experience it all. In Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy, we don’t get to see what’s going on in the character’s mind, we only get to see the outside view of his insanity. But this movie was interesting because Scorsese took us so much closer to the insanity, so that we weren’t made uncomfortable by it, but were sympathetic with it. I think he did the same thing with both The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead, but not to this extent. In that way, I think it does bring something new to the table. At least something new to Scorsese’s table.
But virtually all of the memory scenes were like that. Before the part where they mow down the guards we see Teddy looking down at the camp superintendent who’s shot himself, and there are the pieces of paper endlessly falling from the ceiling. That, too, is unrealistic - did it also take you out of the movie? I just took the guards thing as a stylized dream-memory, and not necessarily as an indication that the memory was real or not.
Anyways, 2 1/2 stars from me. Visually amazing, great directing, good acting, but the story was disappointing, and the screenplay was not great. (I can’t remember a Scorsese movie with as many clunky lines.) As for the story - anyone else agree it might have been more interesting if…
Teddy was right? That it was all a big HUAC/CIA mind game? The fact that he was just another prisoner deflated a lot of it for me. In as operatic a movie as this was I think the stakes needed to be bigger - that there really were sinister forces at work on this gothic island in its stormy bay.
If he’d been right, wouldn’t that have been a cliche? How many conspiracy movies are there, as opposed to purely psychological movies? I thought it was much more interesting that all the people involved were acting parts, and that the bad guys were actually the good guys, all in an effort to try and help Andrew.
That’s actually what I came in to ask…
Was Teddy really insane from having his wife murder his children and him shooting her, or was he really succumbing to the influence of the drugs he had been given (through the “aspirin” and cigarettes)? I never read the original book, did it make it clear it was one way or the other? I could argue both interpretations. I think we’re supposed to think that Teddy was insane, but is it really clear one way or the other?
[spoiler]
I think it’s pretty clear that Teddy really was insane. It’s even clearer the 2nd time through. A lot of moments that either seemed meaningless or creepy/frightening take on a whole different meaning when you know the end. Like when the patient told Teddy that Dr. Sheehan “wasn’t hard on the eyes” and the camera immediately cuts to “Chuck.” Also, there are so many tiny little shots and edits that make it clear his waking state is similar to his dreaming state. Teddy is the very definition of unreliable narrator, and there were no objective moments in the film to support his view of things. For example, the doctor mentions “the storm” as part of his delusions. The next time we see the hospital grounds, it’s perfect. And as the Doctor says, where are the surgery rooms and the Nazi experiments? He’s had access to every possible place there could be one.
Besides all that, the story he had concocted, including being drugged through the food and cigarettes, really is pretty nutty. It’s not crazy to think there’s something suspicious going on in a mental institute, but the full-on 50s paranoia of “ghosts” and “mind control” was supposed to be out there, I think. [/spoiler]
The difference to me is at that point in the movie the guard scene was supposed to be a memory. Most of the other scenes where there are strange occurrences are at that point in the movie dreams. I expect some major oddities in dreams, not so in a memory. Like I said earlier it took me out of the movie, which is not good, even if there is a good reason it was chosen to be like that.
The more I think about this movie, the more upset I am that Paramount dumped this in February. I hope it’s not forgotten during next year’s awards season.
Saw this last night and thought was decent, but flawed. But the more I think about it, and the more I read here and in other places the more it improves in my mind and the more I want to see it a second time to pick up on more clues.
One clue I did catch:
When “Chuck” goes to give his firearm to the guard as they entered the prison, he fumbled w/ removing the gun and ended up taking the entire holster off his hip to hand to the guard. “Teddy” gives him a funny look. Weird little moment but turns out to be a big clue that “Chuck” wasn’t really a marshall.
Also, question… Any signifigance to the “Seattle/Portland” confusion between Teddy and Chuck? The first time it seemed like nothing important but the second time it came up I felt like it should mean something.
One minor gripe -
At the end when they show Teddy pulling his dead children out of the water and laying them on the grass, the little girl WOULD NOT STOP MOVING. She could not play dead for the life of her (pun intended). It made me think that they’d tried it 20 times before Scorsese just said “Fuck it… that’s the best we can get from her.”
Good movie though, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again.
Your two points are related, insofar as the book goes:
In the book, Teddy makes note when Chuck fumbles with his firearm – but it only comes back to his mind when he begins to wonder if people really are who they say they are (although he has no idea at the time that “Chuck” is actually Dr. Sheehan). Once those questions are raised in Teddy’s mind, he tries to trip up Chuck with questions, including people he might know in Seattle.
I noticed that, too – glad I’m not the only one!
This was one of those very infrequent but welcome cases, I thought, in which the movie was much better than the book. There were some pretty cool details sprinkled throughout the film that Dennis Lehane didn’t include in his book – the manacles dangling overhead from the ferry at the beginning of the movie comes immediately to mind. Scorsese did a better job, I think, of conveying just how *sad *the whole situation is.
Regarding Teddy:
My wife and I continue to debate whether Teddy was actually insane (my view) or just made to think that he was insane (her view, although she’s starting to come around). As was the case in the book, the scene that clinched it for me was when Teddy makes the grab for his firearm in the lighthouse, identifies it as unique to him because it’s been dinged up in previous encounters with miscreants, then shoots Dr. Cawley – and it turns out to be a water pistol (another case, I thought, in which the movie scene was better than the book).
Just to be clear here:
[spoiler]This is a movie about a crazy guy who, for whatever reason, hallcinates almost everything?
[/quote]
I can respect that apparently makes for a wide arary of good movies, but I’m just not very interested in the general theme. It’s always a very personal theme, and I’m just never really interested in some guy on the screen having a mental breakdown. I can’t “get” into them, y’know.[/spoiler]
One thing that didn’t make sense till the very end but now leads me to believe EXACTLY what Teddy was is…
[spoiler] One of the first times he looks back to his wife in the apartment, when all the ash is falling down, you can see her start to burn. Initially, I thought this meant that he lied when he said she died of smoke. I thought she must have died of the fire and he didn’t want to tell his new partner that; much too painful to admit. However, when he’s holding her, her stomach starts bleeding. I couldn’t figure it out. Why would her stomach bleed if she died in a fire? At the end however, it occurs to me that he really was insane and killed his wife after discovering what she did to the children. Even in his psychotic flash backs his brain was indicating exactly what had happened.
[/spoiler]
I saw this last night, and I have to say that I love the ending.
I love how you feel so let down when he says, “we’re gonna get off this island, Chuck,” and you see how dejected it makes Sheehan. Then with his very next line, “I’d rather die a good man than live a monster,” bam! I interpret this to mean that the plan worked, he was snapped back into reality, but he’d rather be lobotomized than deal with that pain. Wow. Nice ending.
That’s the same interpretation I had. There were other clues that he wasn’t delusional any more: It was sunny, the grounds were immaculate, the other patients weren’t giving him secret messages. And, most importantly, he went off with the guards without a fight.
As far as the guards being mowed down, I saw it as a parallel of his own situation. The guards had turned into monsters and would have to live the rest of their life facing what they had become. Was it an act of kindness or brutality to kill them? Perhaps a bit of both.
I will say that I knew what the twist was the second Edward had a migraine because of the commercials that scream: “THE TWIST THAT HAS AUDIENCES GASPING!” Thanks for letting me know that, ad men. Sigh.
All in all, I was entertained but agree that it was too long. Loved the cinematography. The acting was quite good with the exception of the little girl, who overacts. The setting was superb. I felt sorry for DiCaprio because he was wet much of the time. That had to be a bummer to act.
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 anyway, what would you cut out, in this particular movie especially? I thought it was the perfect length, but I never noticed the time anyway. The only time I keep track of a movie’s length is when I’m calculating the start time of the movie I’m seeing after it.
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.