Cinema Summaries:Shutter Island

Contrasting strains of sanity with jumbled madness, Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” impedes qualm towards reality and fantasy. It’s a great atmospheric thriller and, while it’s no “Taxi Driver,” it’ll screw with your head.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, “Shutter Island” shadows Federal Marshall Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) as they travel by boat to an asylum for the criminally insane that lies on an eerie, storm-ridden rock in the 1950’s Boston Harbor. A pale and sweaty DiCaprio swindles in room filled with steel toilets jutting from walls and chains swinging and bouncing with the violent waves, and yes, you guessed it, vomit is everywhere. Such instances as these, encumbered with the bromidic weight of flashing lightning, bass crescendos at the most obvious of moments, and lines like, “This is the only way on the island . . . or off!”, shroud the movie with cinematic clichés thicker than the fog surrounding the island.

A theme of deception quickly surfaces and spirals once the film arrives at the asylum. Scorsese strings the audience down a rippled stream of Teddy’s consciousness, which mutates from headaches and nausea into a full blown hurricane of lunacy.

The only true failure of the movie is that, while it exceeds at blurring the mind, it fails at psychologically testing it. It skillfully rubs at the chalked-line between reality and fantasy until its one massive blend, but never plots the course of underlying thought. It was a surprising disappointment that the mental complexities ranked so low given that Scorsese was the director AND the setting was a mental hospital. He was given the perfect lemons to squeeze out that juicy, Oscar-winning thriller, but just made a mess of it.

The cinematography, however, was brilliant to the point of being epic. The dreaded asylum looms over you like a decrepit Sears Tower, as if you yourself are standing on the wave-crushed rocks, looking up at its gray, cracked walls. Then flash-backs and intrusions from a delusional mind take over and creep under your skin until you swoon and feel unanchored.

“Shutter Island” is worth seeing because of its visuals and Leonardo DiCaprio’s always excellent performance, especially since the film arrived in this barren February wasteland of cheap romances and unintentionally funny action-thrillers. It won’t knock you out, but you’ll definitely be seeing stars.

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