Shutter Island

There are a lot of reasons why I haven't seen Shutter Island until now. When it first came out in 2010, I didn't see it because the trailers portrayed it (inaccurately) as a generic horror film set in an insane asylum. 2010 Connor had no interest in that because he was (and still is) a wimp when it comes to horror films. Another reason I didn't end up seeing it was because when everyone figured out it wasn't so much a horror film as much as a it was a cerebral film, it unfortunately fell off people's radars because it came out the same year as Inception and of course that blew everyone's minds and kind of overshadowed this film. More recently though I figured out it was an adaptation from a book and I wanted to read it first. Finally, while I was flying home on a plane I saw it on the in flight entertainment menu and I thought it was finally time.

Shutter Island takes place in the 50s and follows the story of US Marshall Edward (Teddy) Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Teddy and his new partner Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) are sent to Ashcliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter island to investigate the disappearance of a patient of the hospital. The name of the patient is Rachael Solando (played by Emily Mortimer) and she is there because she drowned her kids in the lake.

The audience soon discovers that there is more to this hospital than meets the eye and Teddy makes it his mission to thoroughly investigate Ashcliff to not only find the missing patient, but uncover the unsavory acts happening behind closed doors. The movie starts to blend illusions and reality as Teddy is reminded of his dark past and the mystery unfolds.

So the cast of this movie is actually really solid, utilizing some pretty talented actors and actresses that I'm not sure were as well known or popular at the time. DiCaprio has always been pretty particular about the roles he takes on and the directors he works with and in looking at his filmography, there hasn't been a movie he's been in since 2002 that I haven't thought he's given a solid performance.

I'm not one of those people who believe DiCaprio deserved an Oscar for the longest time well before The Revenant because if we're being honest, I don't think that's necessarily true, Fight me. But that doesn't take away from the fact that he's a solid performer and this movie is no different.

This is such a cerebral and personal movie for DiCaprio's character that it requires someone I need to be totally invested in the whole time and Leo does that with this film. It's not his best performance, but again, I find it hard to find a movie after Catch Me If You Can where you can honestly say that DiCaprio sucked in a role. It cannot be done. Fight Me!

Mark Ruffalo does a good job in this film. I am trying to make it a goal of mine to watch more Ruffalo pre-MCU because the guy is a solid actor, he just hasn't been in many films I watched before he became the Hulk. He doesn't steal the show by any means, but he's good.

Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow both play Doctors at the hospital and these are both veteran actors who I have a very hard time finding a film they're bad in. The one thing about these two is that their characters are a little bit redundant. They're both good, but I feel like you could have combined their characters and made them one. Having read the book I know that they are two separate characters in the book, but I feel like that could have been adapted differently.

Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) plays a small role that was fun. Not incredibly huge or important but fun. I had to actually look him up because his name is not that familiar.

I think the thing that took me by surprise in this movie was the female talent. I've always been a fan of Emily Mortimer from The Newsroom but she's always been a bubbly happy character. In this she's very dark and creepy in her delivery and I loved it. Patricia Clarkson has a small role that was kind of like Levine that I had to look up who she was to recognize her.

And then Michelle Williams has a pretty decent role as the ghost of Teddy's dead wife Dolores. Now I had to look this up, but apparently Williams has been active pretty much since the 90s. She was in a lot of stuff I didn't watch like Dawson's Creek and she's been in other roles since, but I've only really come to notice her in the past few years, especially starting with Manchester by the Sea. More recently she was in The Greatest Showman and I really enjoyed her in that. So it was a surprise to me to see her there doing a phenomenal job in a really cerebral role. I obviously need to be paying more attention to Michelle Williams because she should have been on my radar a long time ago.

Now I loved the book and the movie is pretty true to it. The one issue with that is that because this movie is so cerebral and a bit of a thinker, it's automatically compared to the other cerebral thinker film of 2010 Inception. And I'm going to answer this question right away, Inception is better.

Shutter Island is a really good film. It definitely plays with the mind and it's very well acted, if not a little bit better acted than the performances in Inception. The problem is, Shutter Island is such a condensed story and very personal that it feels very small compared to Inception. When you come to the end of Shutter Island, there is a lot to think about and when you watch it a second time it does change the experience. However, I can't imagine this film is one I would want to watch multiple times over like I do Inception. Watching it twice and maybe revisiting it every once in a while might be the max for me, whereas Inception I could go back to multiple times and still be awed by it.

Now it's not exactly fair to compare the two because while they are cerebral films that came out in 2010, they are still very different. My point of bringing up the comparison is to point out how Shutter Island is a small story. It feels like a noir and the atmosphere is great, but I can't see myself going back to this movie to uncover more things. Once you've uncovered things in the first viewing, you're pretty much covered.

Seriously, if you haven't checked out Shutter Island yet, I am highly recommending it. It's a really solid film. But after that initial viewing and maybe another one, I could imagine this storyline just being a one-off fun experience.

I've laid out the great probably underrated cast, Martin Scorsese directs it the only way he knows how, brilliantly, and the story is definitely one to check out. Don't worry about how it compares to Inception. Take that out of the equation. Again, my point in bringing that up is not to compare them, but to point out the scale of this movie. It's less of an epic, and more of a personal claustrophobic experience. It does that phenomenally.

If you haven't checked out Shutter Island, avoid all spoilers and give it watch, you won't regret it.

But those are my thoughts on Shutter Island. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! Do you think it was unfairly compared to Inception in 2010? Am I unfairly comparing it to Inception now? Have you read the book? Let me know your thoughts. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

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