Was Shutter Island 'Overlooked'?
Martin Scorsese's gothic psychological thriller Shutter Island grossed $294 million worldwide, remains on the awards-season bubble, and persists at year's end as a divisive critical flashpoint. So why is it among L.A. Times critic Betsy Sharkey's most "overlooked" films of 2010? "Director Martin Scorsese's dark and devious brain tease is as much a conversation as a movie," Sharkey writes. "[...] Instead of tying up loose ends, he keeps unraveling them so by the time he drops the big one, you should be good for hours of post-cinema parsing. See it with a friend." Funny, I thought we all... had? Anyway, I'm curious: Help me help you help her understand. [LAT]
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
Brain tease? Really?? The only thing Shitter Island made me wonder was when it was going to be over.
I think it got bowled over by Leo playing essentially the same part in "Inception." I don't mean that in a good way. "Inception" was a bloated, self-important, soulless mess, but it had the power of the Almighty Nolan (and, I'm sure, turdblossom and a billion other blinded Nolan acolytes) behind it, and poor "Shutter" was left in the shade. Which is too damn bad.
Lurid is the best way to describe Shutter Island. It was so absurdly over the top that at one point I thought that it was a spoof. It reminds me of The Good German in that way.
Shutter Island is overrated. It follows the same narrative pattern as Memento (a much, much better film) and by most accounts is plagarism of a 1920 silent film by the name of 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'. The film was so predictable...because it's been done before so many times, it was boring and tired - it tried so hard to be intense, but just wasn't - it was pathetic.
Scorsese is great, but it seems he may be past it now. I think Shutter Island is simply being rated so highly because the dullness and predictability of it goes over the heads of the general viewer (akin to the opening lines of Katy Perry's song "Firework" not being known to come from American Beauty by a select amount of the population) and because it has Martin Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio.
Name value and the same audience of Paranormal Activity and Jackass leads to Shutter Island being overlooked - Looked at way way too much in awards consideration and looked at way too highly.
I figured out the shocking ending to shutter island about 20 minutes into the movie.
Shutter has an awful, awful script. And quite brainwashy, too, considering MKUltra-style psychiatric experiments were hardly imaginary at the time - I was hoping for a rad escape after Leo found the (well-acted) woman in the cave. Instead, we the audience were led into some numbing, irritating and totally unconvincing explanation to what was 'going on'.
Shutter documents DeCap's figuring out how to mimic adulthood, that's about it. Aside from Scorcese's slide to irrelevancy. Hey, it's Focker-free, at least.