Scorsese at the B-Movies for Shutter Island

The year is 1954 and US marshal Billy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner (Mark Ruffalo) head by sea to the bleak and forbidding Shutter Island where a female child killer (Emily Mortimer) has disappeared from her cell at the tightly guarded mental institution. The pair soon find themselves immersed in shady happenings at the institution, where Ben Kingsley is the diabolical head doctor and Max von Sydow glowers with Bergmanesque intensity as the Warden. Daniels is haunted by the death of his wife (Michelle Williams) and dream sequences and flashbacks add to his personal torment.

A looming unease encases the scene. The period trappings are superb, thanks to Dante Ferretti’s production design, Sandy Powell’s costumes and Robert Richardson’s cinematography, which bows to the best kind of B-movies. Add to that Robbie Robertson’s work as music supervisor, drawing on pop songs of the time and the work of John Adams, and you have a formidable visual and aural combination.

We are clearly intended to shiver as the mind games between the guilt-ridden Daniels and his adversaries turn towards actual physical danger. But despite crisp dialogue, the drama turns into outright melodrama halfway through. It is impossible to suspend disbelief as the story twirls to the marshal’s own tortured history, and even, unwisely, to the Holocaust.

Performances vary. DiCaprio still seems like a grown-up boy but does well in a part which scarcely has him off-screen. Ruffalo represents the kind of noir figure we have witnessed in many other films and so does Kingsley, who does his mad doctor bit with calm abandon. Only Mortimer rings entirely true, which in this film is a plus point.

Shutter Island is too long and its increasingly surreal tone provides an ending that’s a bit of a cheat. But, since it is a Scorsese picture, there’s a lot to intrigue on the way.

Shutter Island
Cert: 15