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Shutter Island
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Has anyone else been to see this? Its really dark and strange and bit scary but very interesting. It set on a secret island used by the US government to treat the criminally insane, and two Federal Marshalls going to investigate the disappearance of a woman inmate who was imprisoned for drowning her three children; and gets darker and scarier from there onwards.. I thought it was really good but left me wondering what had really happened and what parts of story were real and which weren't.
Post edited by JustV on
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But I thought that leo was amazing
i noticed the light house things, but i didn't notice the woman not having a glass things that sounds weird to me
As to the mistakes I think you can safely assume that Scorsese would have noticed if his actress wasn't holding a glass. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't seen it, but there's a logical reason why those 'mistakes' happen at the moments they do. Again, I'll leave that for some time we're talking about spoilers
But yeah, great movie and highly recommended - for me one of Scorsese's lesser works (along with Gangs of New York, Aviator, The Departed, Bringing Out of the Dead) but his lesser films still beat most people. The direction was surprisingly weak for me (not weak overall, just weak for Marty). He still seems to be telling good stories but he seems to have either lost or decided to move away from some of the really inventive film making that characterised his earlier work. He's clearly making films as if he was a film maker in the '50s but even in those days the best of cinema was still extraordinary.
However, gotta disagree about DiCaprio. He does do a great job but if you sat down and watched Taxi Driver then Shutter Island I think the difference between a competent and a superb actor would be evident.
For a really clear example of the issues with the direction and the acting I'd recommend watching the first scene of Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland and directed by Nic Roeg. Maybe it's just personal taste but I don't think understated necessarily works when something so horrific is being shown, again avoiding spoilers lets just say, for me, a recovered memory shouldn't be framed in the same repressed style.
Oh and one other thing, shame Saul Bass isn't still around.
I think with Sam Rockwell or Ed Norton as the main character, some riskier or more challenging directorial decisions (although the glass moment is tremendous) and a great Bass opening title sequence you could have had something to rival the very best of Hitchcock.
Great final conversation though but for me making a film as deliberately understated as this doesn't completely pay off.
Oh and for any film buffs with an interest in this actual period of mental health treatment I'd recommend tracking down John Huston's banned 1946 documentary 'Let There Be Light' (which went unseen until 1981 despite being paid for by the US Army) and Titicutt Follies - for the best and the worst examples of post-war psychiatry and attitudes.
After seeing films like 2012, Avatar, Alice in Wonderland and Green Zone in the last few months its honestly refreshing to watch a film that does not have a straighforward plot, filled with visual metaphors and is very very consistant in its storytelling.
Well worth going to watch!
The twist at the end was awesome, and I didn't see it coming - I just thought the pace moved a bit slowly. And, I thought it'd be eerier. One guy in the back row was snoring throughout the whole movie... perhaps that spoiled some of it for me. :razz:
I thought Leo was fab, though.
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