nan | 楠木

The first signs that Shutter Island may not appeal to my tastes came very early – when the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, playing a couple of US marshals, first step on said island and is being transported to the central facility, a loud and intrusive score starts blaring. The ominous cellos make your heartbeat race, and I couldn’t help but notice that this is an effect typical of horror flicks – the opening credits of The Shining immediately comes to mind, where an otherwise scenic drive up to a mountain resort is transformed into a trail into your worst nightmare, thanks to the eerie score. Indeed, quite a few critics have picked up on these editing choices.

Shutter Island is primarily concerned with blurring the line between what is real and what isn’t. DiCaprio’s character, Teddy Daniels, is brought in to investigate the disappearance of a patient at the mental asylum housed on the island. As the audience soon discovers, Daniels has his own agenda to pursue (partly driven by the events surrounding his wife’s death), and the asylum is not all it seems.

Some of the film’s most visually compelling scenes are Daniels’ dreams, which are a rich collection of montages stunningly designed. Sharp colors, camera tricks and some haunting settings combine to make impressionable images – in one scene, Daniels (a WWII veteran) is back in the concentration camp at Dachau and witnesses the slow agonizing death of a SS officer; in another, he is reunited with his wife and as they embrace she starts to effuse water and blood (a piece of the puzzle).

Being a psychological thriller, Shutter Island goes off in several directions, intentionally. There is a general sense of direction, through the plot device of the island and its facilities being sectioned off by accessibility – Daniels has access to Ward A and Ward B, but Ward C, originally a fortress, houses the most dangerous (and therefore the most interesting) patients and is off limits; and then there is a lighthouse, cautiously guarded and far from the main facilities. It seems that these areas house the answers to the mystery, and the film naturally builds up in tension as Daniels explores these grounds.

Ultimately, at 138 minutes, Shutter Island just drags a bit too long for me. The puzzle is an interesting one (what is the truth? What’s real and what’s not?), but it takes an strenuous effort to sit this film through. It is a stylish production, full of memorable individual scenes, but as a whole it doesn’t particularly stand out.

7/10