Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is an engrossing gothic thriller, driven by Leonardo DiCaprio’s strained, watchful performance. It runs too long and explains too much, but the asylum remains an unsettling place to spend an evening.
Martin Scorsese treats Shutter Island’s isolated asylum and troubled investigator as sufficient reasons for alarm. He takes this gothic thriller seriously, and gives us little opportunity to stand back from Teddy Daniels’s fear. The film is engrossing and oppressive, weakened by excessive length and an appetite for explanation that its strongest scenes do not need. It is worth the evening, provided sustained distress sounds more appealing than a briskly solved case.
Leonardo DiCaprio gives Teddy Daniels a worn concentration that makes the investigation feel like an effort he can scarcely afford. He makes the fear convincing even when the plot is at its most elaborate. We follow the man even when keeping track of the case begins to feel like homework. Ben Kingsley, as Dr Cawley, is useful in a different way: his authority makes the doctor’s presence difficult to dismiss, however suspicious the atmosphere becomes. Their performances keep the conversations tense.
Robert Richardson’s cinematography pushes hardest in the dream sequences, where the intensity of the images makes the uncertainty more disturbing. Those passages interrupt our confidence in the investigation as well as its progress. Dante Ferretti’s production design makes the asylum an intimidating place for even a conversation, keeping the institutional setting oppressive while the film grows more feverish. There is little relief in returning from Teddy’s troubled perceptions to his surroundings. We found the dream sequences upsetting because DiCaprio looks no less frightened there than he does during the investigation.
Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing helps sustain that discomfort by making the shifts between investigation and nightmare feel intrusive. We are repeatedly denied the chance to consider a piece of information before something else disturbs our understanding of it. The music adds another persistent source of unease, although its insistence sometimes duplicates what the images have already achieved. Scorsese is reluctant to give us a quiet stretch in which to collect ourselves. That relentlessness is effective for much of the film, but across 138 minutes it also becomes tiring.
Laeta Kalogridis’s screenplay, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, has more difficulty deciding how much explanation is enough. The complications keep us occupied, but the dialogue can seem determined to settle matters that the performances have made more troubling. We need some clarity; we do not need every uncertainty treated as a problem requiring further discussion. The longer these explanations continue, the harder it becomes to stay frightened. This is a significant limitation in a film whose actors and images have done so much to sustain our unease.
The willingness to take fear this seriously is a considerable strength in a gothic thriller. There is no reassuring wink to tell us that the filmmakers are above their material, and no embarrassment about the melodrama. Scorsese’s commitment allows the dreams, suspicious encounters and oppressive surroundings to remain effective even when we recognise the conventions. A viewer interested only in being outguessed may find the approach laborious. Give it an uninterrupted evening, and let the investigation proceed without turning every scene into a competition.
