Sunday, February 21, 2010

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker. Some might even say legendary. Through a career spanning almost 40 years and and over 30 feature films, Scorsese has solidified himself as a cinema giant, master of hard-hitting realism featuring violence, madness, and just sometimes, redemption. Scorsese has also been known to return to the same actors time and again. In his early career, his favorite was Robert DeNiro, with iconic roles in Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Casino (1995). As DeNiro has aged and his roles have diversified, Scorsese has turned to new blood as his pet actor. Starting with 2002's Gangs of New York, Leonardo DiCaprio has taken up the reins that DeNiro laid aside, including starring turns in The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), and this year's Shutter Island. In my opinion, this has accompanied a downturn in the quality of Scorsese's work. Let's face it, DiCaprio is no DeNiro. Not even close. I'm not quite sure what Scorsese sees in DiCaprio, because all I see when I watch him onscreen is that scrawny autistic teenager from What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), or worse, flashbacks to that monumental waste of three hours of my life: Titanic (1997).

The casting of DiCaprio is the first strike against Shutter Island. The film is set in the early 1950s and opens on US Marshals Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) on the ferry to Shutter Island, an imposing little speck of land isolated in Boston Harbor. The island houses the foremost corrections institution for the criminally insane in the United States, a deceptively garden-like facility overshadowed by the cold and massive walls of an old Civil War fort. The fort houses the most dangerous of the inmates, or as the facility's lead psychiatrist Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) prefers, "patients."

The Marshals have been called in to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of one of the inmates, a woman convicted of drowning her three small children in a lake. As the investigation begins in earnest, Teddy and Chuck find themselves up against a recalcitrant staff and paranoid patients. After several avenues of investigation have petered out or been stamped out by Dr. Cawley's firm insistence, the Marshals begin to wonder why they were called in to investigate. Does Dr. Cawley really want them to find the escaped patient? Does she even exist at all? What goes on in the windowless fort housing the most dangerous inmates? And what goes on inside the island's lighthouse, surrounded by electrified fence and heavy guard night and day? As the investigation deepens, Teddy struggles with vivid flashbacks and visions, both of his time in the army at the liberation of Dachau, and of his wife, recently killed in a fire set by a man who may or may not reside as a patient within the walls of the fort.

My main complaint about Shutter Island is the predictability. Even within the first few minutes of the film, the setup might lead a viewer to easily guess the eventual twist waiting at the film's climax. And if you hadn't guessed within the first few minutes, then the use of surreal and dream-like visuals by a director known for his hard-line realism might tip you off as well. On the other hand, having guessed the twist so early, I was free to take in more of the excellent things this film has to offer, such as the incredible visuals, both of Shutter Island and its environs, and the various dream-sequences the audience is led through. The color palette in use here is wildly over-saturated, making almost everything stand out like a hallucination, an apt delivery considering the film's setting.

Despite its negative aspects, what really shined through for me was the excellent casting choices, and the great acting. With the exception of the aforementioned DiCaprio problem, the supporting cast is phenomenal. From Mark Ruffalo's calm and centered answer to DiCaprio's rage and mania, to Kingsley's joyfully mysterious Dr. Cawley, to Max Von Sydow's understated menace as an experimental psychiatrist with possible Nazi ties, the supporting roles truly steal the scene here. Also worth mentioning are Elias Koteas as the hideously scarred pyromaniac that haunts Teddy's dreams, and Jackie Earle Haley as a frightened inmate of the fort (and possibly the voice of Teddy's conscience). My personal favorite is Ted Levine (better known as Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) as Shutter Island's warden. Who else could deliver this line not only with a straight face, but with a hint of mocking aplomb: "If I were to sink my teeth into your left eye right now, could you stop me before I blinded you?"

So, yes, there's a whole lot of exposition from a cavalcade of bit part players, and a whole lot of wandering around the island without getting much done. I didn't say it was a great movie, and it's certainly not Scorsese's best, but it does show that he's still got the talent to make a decent movie nearly 40 years into his career, and that's not bad at all. My verdict: skip the theater, but put it on your Netflix queue.

Storyline & plot: 5/10
Cinematography & effects: 7/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 8/10

The Reverend says: 6/10

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The House of the Devil

Easily the two most polarizing horror films of 2009 were Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity (reviewed here previously), and Ti West's The House of the Devil, a little slice of horror nostalgia about a very strange time in America's collective subconcious. An odd marriage of permutated Cold War anxiety and a burgeoning psychoanalytic movement gave birth to an entrenched national fear of satanic individuals, cults, and particularly the alleged ritual abuses they enacted. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) is the obvious early cinematic statement on the matter, but the cultural fervor lasted well into the early 1980s.

The premise for The House of the Devil is refreshingly simple: looking for some extra cash to make the deposit on a new apartment, college sophomore Samantha responds to a mysterious ad for a babysitter. Unfazed by her potential employer's odd telephone etiquette, Samantha agrees to take the babysitting job at a sprawling country home in an unspecified area of upstate New York. Little does Sam know that the job is not exactly what it appears, and that somewhere inside the Ulmans' country estate lurks a series of grisly and demonic secrets. Faced with the unsettling Ulman family, the disquieting house, and threats lurking both within and without, Sam's night slowly descends into terror.

I suspect that West's choice of an early '80s setting was initially nothing more than a plot device to eliminate the inconvenient reality of the vast and instant communication network available to us now through cell phones and the internet. Which, to many, would seem like cheating. But this simple plot device blossomed into a meticulous and fun homage to the late '70s/ early '80s horror vibe. Not only this, but West's anti-technology choice is a welcome counterstrike to a horror market glutted with thematically stale iterations of technophobia. To wit: Stephen King's novel Cell, South Korea's Phone (2002) and America's dreadful pseudo-remake One Missed Call (2008), and the Japanese Pulse (2001) and its even more ridiculous American remake of the same name from 2006. As the subtle exclamation point to his techno-bivalent statement, West inserts several telephone conversation scenes (many with rotary phones!) to serve as intermittent communication fulcrum points in a film otherwise marked by a profound sense of isolation.

The House of the Devil's detractors (and there are many) fall into two main categories: those who think the film's subject matter is misplaced for a 2009 release, and those who balk at the film's somewhat unconventional pace. It's true that modern technocratic America has very little use for fears over satanic cults. Most of these fears have long since proved unfounded. Accusations of satanic abuses were grossly exaggerated. Psychoanalysis is now met with heavy skepticism. The Cold War is over. We now have too many real wars accompanied by too many real atrocities. Why invent satanists to take the fall? Besides, Satanism is now a recognized and protected religion. Satanists are your neighbors. Satanists are your friends.

But remember: Rosemary's Baby wasn't really about satanism. It was about the claustrophobia and paranoia bred by urban living. And about the tenuous nature of trust in a new marriage. Satanism was just the supernatural icing on the cake. West just inverts Polanski's urban claustrophobia and comes out with rural isolation. And then doubles up on the isolation theme with an obviously withdrawn and lonely protagonist. Sam hates her current roommate, has no family to speak of, and has only one real friend to talk to. Critics who decry the slow pace of the film's middle may not realize that it perfectly accentuates Sam's physical and emotional isolation, all while slowly injecting a sense of profound dread. Punctuating this are intermittent slices of brutal violence, made all the more shocking by the relative silences that precede and follow. When the film's furious climax comes, it's almost a letdown, because the reality of violence is less intense than the dreading of the previously unknown.

All in all, I believe the criticisms directed at The House of the Devil are largely misplaced, but I understand that Ti West has created a film that may have a limited audience of genre fans that appreciate a nostalgic romp through old fears. Aside from a mid-movie Walkman dance sequence (that was still oddly compelling), the film stays grounded in serious filmmaking instead of reaching directly for the easily accessible over-the-top cheese.

Storyline & plot: 6/10
Cinematography & effects: 9/10
Music & mood: 9/10
Performances: 7/10

The Reverend says: 8/10