Once On This Island

Leo and Marty get Hitched on Shutter Island.

by Shaun Brady

LIONIZED: Leonardo DiCaprio (left) is a U.S. Marshal investigating an Alcatraz-like mental institution with partner Mark Ruffalo in Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.

[City Paper Grade: B ]

As much as homage has long been Martin Scorsese's second language, he's largely refrained from drawing too heavily on the work of Alfred Hitchcock. And no wonder; the ice that ran in Hitch's veins would evaporate in the hothouse atmosphere of Scorsese's red-blooded frenzies.

Leave it to filmdom's most dedicated worshipper at the altar of cinema to find a back way into the master's oeuvre, via the alleys of Poverty Row thrillers. Adapted from Dennis Lehane's novel, Shutter Island feels like Spellbound filtered through Sam Fuller's hard-boiled baroque.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese's most recent muse, stars as a federal marshal investigating a missing inmate on an isolated, Alcatraz-styled mental institution. He starts the film looking worse off than most action heroes do at the end of this sort of misadventure: sweat-drenched, bandaged and vomiting from seasickness. It isn't long before blinding migraines, ghostly visitations and vivid hallucinations get thrown into the mix. The doctors at the odd institution, led by a hammy Ben Kingsley, don't seem inclined to assist the investigation, and soon DiCaprio and partner Mark Ruffalo are awash in conspiracy theories and evil experiments.

Some may think it spoiling to mention that a twist calls this into question, but Scorsese announces from the film's first image its setting in a subconscious unreality. The ferry bringing DiCaprio and Ruffalo to the island doesn't so much emerge from fog as imagine itself into being; little that follows proceeds with any degree of logic.

Laeta Kalogridis' script is clunky and overly talkative, its forecasting of that sting in the tail unforgivable if telling a standard suspense tale were Scorsese's intention. But what he's after is less a two-fisted spook show than an exploration of the human aptitude for violence and the internal struggle it can instigate. The drama unfolds in 1954 and is mired in the period, with Nazi atrocities still fresh in the minds of everyone, especially DiCaprio's ex-G.I., present at the liberation of Dachau.

Everyone he confronts in the asylum reflects some element of the era's world-changing tendencies, raising the spectres of H-bombs, HUAC and transorbital lobotomies. The internal struggle manifest in these tirades is mirrored by the debate over how to treat this planet gone insane. Kingsley's doctor presents himself as the harbinger of a modern therapeutic age, out to disprove the pill-pushers and scalpel-wielders.

Scorsese gussies these philosophical arguments in every Old Dark House trick, all given a lustrous sheen by cinematographer Robert Richardson, whose burning-filament whites conjure their own ghosts. Along with Robbie Robertson's deftly-chosen soundtrack culled from contemporary classical composers (Ligeti, Adams, Feldman, Penderecki), they create an atmosphere of mystery that even the clichés of script and cheap scare tactics can't dispel.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Shutter Island | Directed by Martin Scorsese, A Paramount Pictures release, opens Fri., Feb. 19 at area theaters.