LITERAL REMAINS

Shutter Island, as directed by Martin Scorsese, is a faithful adaption of Dennis Lehane’s novel.  That’s one problem, right there, with the movie:  Too faithful.

Federal Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, are sent to Shutter Island, to an institute for the criminally insane.  The ferry emerges from the fog ominously, maybe even pretentiously.  There is a storm coming, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain a-gonna fall.  Their business at the crazy house is to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients, Rachel Solando.  She, somehow, disappeared from a locked room.  It’s as if she just vanished through the walls.

As the marshals arrive, the guards are on edge, as is everyone else, and are preparing for the storm.  Plus, you know, there’s a crazy woman running free somewhere on the island.  She’s very violent, very dangerous, very delusional, very nutso.  I may have dated her once or twice.  Right away the doctors at the facility offer to help anyway they can, but refuse requests to let the marshals see patient and personnel files.  The nurses and orderlies seem a little skittish.  Something just ain’t right on Shutter Island.

And something just ain’t right with Ted Daniels.  He is haunted by flashbacks of WWII, and is tormented by dreams of his dead wife, Dolores, who died in an apartment fire set by one of the patients at Shutter Island.  Hmmm, just what exactly is Teddy up to?  Not revenge really, not in the normal sense; he wants to expose Shutter Island as a barbaric place that experiments on its patients.

CUT TO DREAM SEQUENCE- TEDDY’S WIFE, DRIPPING WET WITH WATER  Ahhh!  Dammit!

Remaining faithful to the source novel means Teddy has a lot of flashbacks.  A lot.  They took me out of the movie just as something interesting seemed to be happening, or was about to happen.  A lot of times I was wishing something would happen.  A good portion of Shutter Island  is boring.  What worked so well in the book doesn’t work so well as a movie.  A nip here, a tuck there, and this could have a been a tense, claustrophobic film, but they left it all in and the suspense fizzles.

3 out of 5
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