Shutter Island in Review: Eh, So-So...

No, this isn't your typical Martin Scorsese movie. Though there are some moments of sublime beauty and violence, take for instance the beauty of Dinah Washington singing "This Bitter Earth" over the closing credits... Wowsa. And the violence of the raining ash in the dream of Edward's burnt wife. These are peaks in an otherwise flat terrain. Overall I'd say the dreams were the best part of this film. The dreams are a window onto a tortured soul that has seen too much innocence lost, and has stared into the empty eyes of man's inhumanity to man. The dreams and memories of Edward twist the thread of the film beautifully. So the dreams were my favorite, and the cast. Patricia Clarkson! What a treat.

As movies about sinister alternate realities go, this is no Fight Club. And it's only barely better than Gothika. Despite the legendary cast, for all the decent writing, as hard as the menacing and moody set tries, this film does not live up to the Scorsese genius we all know and love. But you know what? Who cares! He's got laurels, let him rest on them.

Shutter Island has a fairly intact arc, but it changes tone too often. Sometimes it's Kafka-esque surrealism, sometimes it's a Hitchcock psychological thriller, sometimes it's a war movie, sometimes it's a horror movie. The sad part is, in a better movie all these tones could compliment each other and make the movie stronger, but in this case they hang too loosely apart from one another, and seem disjointed. It's one thing for the characters to seem disjointed, but we shouldn't necessarily notice it in the movie as a whole.

What really kills Shutter Island for me is the awkward transition from the dark world of paranoia to the brighter world of the awakened psyche. These transitions work best when the intrinsic awkwardness is exploited for it's disorienting quality. Unless I missed something, it wasn't ambiguous enough (I love to be left wondering) and it was too thoroughly explained, as refined as white sugar. This is one of those endings that gets narrated to death by the characters.

And so, regretfully, I file Shutter Island away, perhaps never to be seen again, certainly not to be rhapsodically reminisced about. Next up: The Hurt Locker.