Film Review: Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island arrives as something of a curious artefact in the director’s filmography—an accomplished stylistic exercise that nevertheless falls short of the punishing brilliance that defines his most indelible work. Released in February rather than during the prestige of awards season, the film carries with it the faint whiff of a project deemed insufficiently substantial for Oscar contention. This scheduling decision appears vindicated by the finished product: whilst undeniably well-crafted, Shutter Island ultimately resembles a master practising scales rather than composing a symphony.
The narrative, adapted faithfully from Dennis Lehane’s novel, transports us to 1954, where United States Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive at Ashecliffe Hospital, a forbidding psychiatric institution situated on a remote island off the Massachusetts coast. Their brief is ostensibly straightforward: investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient who has vanished from a locked room despite elaborate security measures. Yet the investigation quickly unravels amidst a gathering storm that severs the island from the mainland, the brazen hostility of the medical staff led by Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley), and Daniels’s own increasingly fragile psychological state—plagued as he is by traumatic memories of his late wife (Michelle Williams) and the atrocities he witnessed as a soldier in the Second World War.
Scorsese’s treatment of this material reveals a director consciously operating outside his customary milieu. Just as he once demonstrated with The Age of Innocence that he could outmanoeuvre Merchant Ivory at their own game, here he proves equally adept at the sort of atmospheric Gothic thriller that made M. Night Shyamalan’s reputation a decade prior. The director conjures a genuinely oppressive atmosphere, amplifying the source material’s dread through evocative period detail that evokes the ambient anxieties of the Cold War era—the looming spectre of nuclear annihilation that haunted the 1950s American psyche. Amongst the various narrative digressions, there are even allusions to the Bleiburg repatriations, suggesting a film attempting to grapple with historical trauma on multiple registers.
Yet for all its atmospheric competence, Shutter Island remains stubbornly earthbound. The central twist—telegraphed with such heavy-handed insistence that attentive viewers will likely decipher it well before the denouement—lacks the genuine surprise that would justify the film’s protracted 138-minute running time. The pacing, too, feels deliberately sluggish, stretching tension to the point where it risks becoming mere tedium. One cannot escape the impression that Scorsese, having finally secured his long-overdue Academy Award for The Departed—an honour likened to Barack Obama’s presidential election, motivated more by a collective desire to expiate past sins than by genuine conviction in the candidate’s superiority—now finds himself liberated from the pressure of awards contention, perhaps to the detriment of his narrative discipline.
Where the film undeniably succeeds is in its performances and technical execution. DiCaprio anchors the proceedings with a committed portrayal of a man unravelling, supported by a sterling ensemble that includes several Oscar winners and nominees. The craft is impeccable: Robbie Robertson’s anachronistic score, the expressionist cinematography, and the production design all conspire to create an environment of palpable unease.
Ultimately, Shutter Island is a superior example of genre filmmaking—considerably more accomplished than the cheap, predictable thrillers that typically populate multiplexes—yet it cannot measure against Scorsese’s genuine masterpieces such as Taxi Driver or Goodfellas. It is a stylish demonstration of craft from a director operating at perhaps seventy percent of his capabilities; a film that satisfies without truly stirring the soul. For audiences seeking a respectable psychological thriller, it delivers handsomely. For those hoping to witness the Scorsese of legend, it offers only tantalising glimpses of what might have been.
Rating: 7/10
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