Depressing Day

Joel Axler, the co-founded of popular Canadian comedy club Yuk Yuks once told me that the entertainment business is a great one to be in but you need to be prepared to deal with a lot of death. He told me he would cringe every time owner Mark Breslin would call him for fear that it would be news of another death.

I suppose most people have heard of Corey Haim's death by drug overdose by now. He was 38. Haim was an iconic teen star of the 80s who, along with constant collaborator Corey Feldman, who also struggled with drug addiction, made some likable if wholly forgettable films. Haim had been out of the spotlight for a while, being most recently seen in the A&E reality show Two Corey's, which, not surprisingly, I never watched. I'm not really affected or surprised by news of this death, Haim has been out of the spotlight for too long to get nostalgic over and unlike John Hughes, who's work also dominated the 80s, his films have not aged into memorable classics. Still it is always sad to hear of the death of someone much before their time. It seems that these celebrity deaths happen in groups of three. A couple years ago it was Brad Renfro followed by Heath Ledger and Anthony Minghella. This year it has been Brittany Murphy and now Haim. Who will be the third?

In other depressing, albeit more ironic news, the LA Times is reporting that someone was stabbed in the neck during a screening of Shutter Island, a film about an institution for the criminally insane, at the Lancaster Cinemark 22. The story goes that the man was upset by a woman seated close to him who was talking on her cellphone during the film. When he confronted her she left with two other men who returned several minutes later and stabbed him in the neck with a mean thermometer. No word is given on the man's condition except that his wounds are serious and the suspects have not been found. Yikes, what is the world coming to when it's not even safe to go to the theater anymore?

Can You Spot A Great Film?: A Justification of Shutter Island

There are two director's working today who, above all others, have managed to rise above just being great filmmakers and into the realms of pop culture phenomenons. One is Quintin Tarantino and the other is Martin Scrosese. The problem with great filmmakers reaching this status though is that hordes of viewers flock to their movies for no better reason than because everything attached to their name must be brilliant by default. This isn't based on any critical logic, any in-depth thought or any knowledge about the trajectory of the filmmaker's career; it's just generally accepted pop culture wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. I know hundreds of people who think Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas are masterpieces, and they are, but I can count on one hand roughly how many people have been able to provide a decent explanation as to why this is the case.

Therefore kids, and adults too, will go to these movies and declare them masterpieces because well, isn't that what Tarantino and Scorsese do: make masterpieces, as if they have exceeded mere morality and are instead a brand name known for quality every time. And, in fact, they are known for quality. I've only seen one Scrosese movie I didn't like (The Colour of Money) and two Tarantino movies I didn't like (Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof), but I could sit down and conduct a conversation or debate, justifying my loves and disappointments for every film each director has helmed. After seeing Inglourious Basterds in August I went to the McDonald's across the street from the theater to get a McFlurry when some kid I knew vaguely from high school, who had apparently also seen the movie, explained to his friends with vigour all the ins and outs of Tarantino's oeuvre without ever once saying anything useful about the aesthetic texture of his films, the brilliance of their construction, the subtlety of using dialogue to create the kind of drama that no physical representation could, and so on. Every time I hear conversations going on like this I think feel like interrupting and saying, "Hey kid, Tarantino is more than just hip dialogue and references to other films." And then I think of French critic Pierre Rissient who said that 'It is not enough to like a film. Oe must like it for the right reasons."

I'm not trying to be some sort of film snob here, but what Rissient says is true: it's not enough to like films because the vast majority of their viewers have deemed them good. You have to have a justifiable reason, otherwise, your opinion is a moot point that is being set up to be knocked down. That's why bad films like The Usual Suspects, The Boondock Saints and Fight Club have gotten so popular: a lot of people started to say they were good simply because they were different until the point where it would be considered taboo to cast a bad word against them (see my reconsideration of Donnie Darko to see what I am talking about).

But now I have gotten off topic because those kids are talking about movies they liked. I'm talking about good movies: movies where you can see a masterful director making the best out of what they have been given. I'm talking about appreciating good lighting and editing and camera angles; all that stuff that lead to a films overall style. Too often people confuse movies they like with movies that are good. Anyone can express if they likeed something to some sort of extent, but few people have the knowledge to judge whether a film is actually good or not.

That finally brings me to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island which is the kind of film that really tests Scorsese's (or any great filmmaker's) audience and separates the film "viewers" from the film "watchers." I say this because as I was watching Shutter Island, someone in the back of the theater was laughing as each new revelation of the story was revealed, clearly so disgusted with the path the story had taken that he just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Then, after the screening, I heard some teenage girl declare it the "gayest" movie she had ever seen. Really, I thought, these are the people who go to see Scrosese's movies?

But you see, Shutter Island is a good movie. It's actually a masterpiece if you don't take the story into consideration. It's a masterpiece in film style, perfectly evoking a long forgotten time and genre of filmmaking. Scorsese flawlessly evokes the look and feel of the 50s film noir and uses that as a grounds to create the suspense of horror of the story. How does it do it? Well how about the brilliant overhead lighting, casting long shadows up walls and across floors, the shot that begins as a close up of Leonardo DiCaprio's face until pulling up to reveal the vastness of a cliff side lurking just behind him, one wrong move leading to death. Then there's my favourite shot in the movie. It takes place in Ward C and is an overhead shot on a low angle that shows a maze of steel stairs and corridors hitning that the story starting to come apart by perfectly representing the main character's state of mind: cold, dark, confused, and going in an endless tangle of directions all at once. The examples could go on for days.

That's great filmmaking. If the story isn't up to Scrosese's standards, well at least he still brought his A-game to the table. That's the problem with Scrosese as a pop culture icon: everyone can see the brilliance of the tracking shot in Goodfellas because tracking shots are big and obvious and draw attention to themselves, but when Scrosese goes subtle, pays homage to a past film genre, creates for his film the style it deserves and not the one that announces itself as film style, the movie is passed off or thrown away, as if it never occurred to these people to ask why Scrosese is considered, after all, one of America's best living filmmakers in the first place, because, believe it or not, there is a justifiable reason. It's the job (and the fun) of movie lovers to figure it out.

Shutter Island (4 out of 5)

The boat rolls out of a fog so dense that it renders everything a brilliant white. It might as well be sailing straight out of 50s film noir. Aboard it U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels vomits violently in the washroom. This is a man who has not repented for the sins of his past and carries that burden atop his every move. As an agent he looks the part: tan suit, sharp hat; the whole nine. As played by Leonardo DiCaprio he’s a seasoned professional: been too many places to be much surprised anymore and seen too many things to much care, and yet he carries hidden secrets in the way he holds his shoulders and hangs his head. To him, this new case at the state run mental hospital for the criminally insane will be an in-and-out job but his partner Chuck knows better, “If these guys only heard voices and chased butterflies they wouldn’t need us.”

The men are escorted to an entrance gate, surrounded by looming brick walls and guarded by emotionless men with big guns. They are instructed to hand over their weapons because, as a state run facility, it is the law that the guards carry rank over the cops. They’ll play by their rules or not play at all. While a storm brews outside they are lead to Dr. Cawley, the man in charge. He is played by Ben Kingsley which means he is proper, well-spoken and pristinely mannered, while also managing to give the feeling of always holding something back. It doesn’t help that his colleague at the institution is played by Max von Sydow who has made a career out of always holding back deep secrets that give off ominous tones.

That’s the set-up to Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, the director’s first excursion back into thriller territory since Cape Fear and his first into classic horror and film noir. Two Boston cops are sent to the isolated institution in order to track down an escaped patient that no one will admit to having seen escape or know exactly how she went about it. “It’s as if she just evaporated through the walls,” assesses Cawley, and he may be right; there seems to be a lot of spirits haunting the walls of Shudder Island, or at least the pain of their memories. The girl in question us Rachel, who drowned her three children and still, according to Dr. Cawley, has no idea what she has done or that she is even in an institution.

The grounds are divided into three buildings, a ward for the men, a ward for the women and Ward C, which used to be an old Civil War post and houses the most dangerous criminals. No one is allowed access to Ward C without the accompaniment of both Cowley and the warden.

As the investigation progresses Teddy is attacked by migraines and visions of his wife who was killed in a fire and to his days during World War II in which he saw dozens of men slaughtered without mercy in a concentration camp. As the investigation progresses and Teddy gets closer to uncovering the truth his inner demons take him closer and closer to the physiological breaking point. What about the institution that triggers these dark feelings in Teddy is one of its many secrets, of which I dare not continue to hint at.

This is a brilliant set-up for Martin Scorsese to evoke that golden period of classic horror and film noir, which consisted of wounded men carrying their emotional baggage around on their shoulders, drifting from one job to the next, always searching for some sort of inner redemption that is just out of reach. Here Scorsese once again proves himself the master of tones and moods, of implying more by showing less. Shutter Island is, if nothing more, a brilliant exercise in set design, lighting, costumes and editing. Every frame is meticulously constructed to convey the sinister undercurrents that could lie around every dark, damp corridor of the wards. Consider the way Scorsese slowly tracks the camera through desolate spaces in ominous point-of-view shots, how high angles reveal labyrinth mazes of unending stairs and corridors or how the camera cranes up from close-ups to reveal imminent danger lurking in the background. Not to mention Ward C, when Teddy finally gets there. It’s a virtual hell-on-earth that will go down as one of the great horror sequences of its time.

As a thriller, the first two thirds of Shutter Island are riveting and we eagerly anticipate what new tricks Scorsese has up his sleeve. And then, as most thrillers tend to do, the film loses touch in an effort to ceaselessly explain itself (a verbal description in the third act is followed by a flashback that visually depicts the exact same thing) and we’re left with another case of the explanation being much less than the buildup, leaving the sinking realization that the material has no intention of rising to the occasion that Scorsese and his actors have set for it, leaving Scorsese trying to pull rabbits out of empty hats.

And yet Scorsese’s brilliance as a filmmaker still stands outside of the story and keeps the wheels spinning. The filmmaker’s mastery of his craft oozes into every perfectly constructed shot and the film thus, even when stalling, feels like a work of art to be hung on the wall and pondered over the delicacy of its creation. As the greatest living filmmaker working in America, Shutter Island will not be remembered as Martin Scrosese’s best film. In lesser hands it wouldn’t even pass as a tolerable thriller and yet even as its plot crumbles down around it, as an evocation of a classic, long forgotten genre and all its moods, textures and surfaces, it is just about a perfect stylistic exercise.