FantasticBabblings

Shutter Island

I recently acquired a Blu-Ray DVD Player. I use it mostly to watch Netflix streaming videos, but I have watched a few discs on it and up until now I didn’t see the big difference from regular HD on television, but on the Blu-Ray disc for Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s 2010 psychodrama, the difference in quality was more than noticeable. It made me want to get a bigger TV. It’s all part of the grand conspiracy to deprive me of my money.

I did not see this film in the theater. It wasn’t overwhelmingly successful and the reviews were mixed. My response to it was mixed and begs further viewings. That’s all part of the conspiracy too. I will have to buy the Blu-Ray disc so that I can watch it many times over the coming decades. Some movies do that do me; they get richer with repetition. But here is my first impression. After the second, I may not have that feeling. Maybe I should watch the Netflix copy again before I shell out money to own it.

In brief, if you haven’t seen it or even if you have, the story is about two US Marshalls who are ferried to Shutter Island to investigate an escaped inmate at this hospital for the criminally insane. The main investigator is Leonardo DiCaprio, whose wife died in a fire and haunts his memories. His partner is Mark Ruffalo, who mainly shadows DiCaprio asking “Are you OK, boss?” They discover some scary and unethical things going on on the island and the hijinks begin. I won’t spoil with details. And by hijinks I mean gloom. It is a somber film

Starting off the film seems to me to be an ironic, subtle parody of B-films and TV shows in the 50s, but with the most sublime production values. Much of the dialogue seems clunky unless you view it through meta-colored glasses. Or hear it through meta-colored… make up your own damn meta-phor. There are moments of dry wit, particularly from Max (big Noggin) von Sydow. At many times the film works on a cerebral level, but misses on a gut level. At times, but inconsistently, Scorcese looks like he is doing an homage to Hitchcock, but he couldn’t seem to find a spare McGuffin lying around to make us care. I found the film seductive most of the time, but it never really paid off with the thrill that seduction promises. Ain’t that always the case? I appreciated the film most when I held it as a detached curio rather than trying to get inside of it emotionally.

All that said, it looks gorgeous. It sounds great. The performances are all competent with a couple of really nice scenes from Jackie Earle Haley and Patricia Clarkson. I liked a lot of the music from 20th Century composers like Penderecki, Ligeti, Cage, Nam June Paik, Max Richter, Mahler. I know Mahler was 19th Century, but he influenced the 20th. My favorite part of the whole piece was the music in the closing credits taking the vocal track from Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” and remixing it with Richter’s “On The Nature of Daylight” (play video above).

After watching the whole thing, I did have an overall emotional response to it, but subtle. There were no emotional wallops in the course of things; the pace was a bit metronomic and calm. I was left with a gentle melancholia.

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