Review: Please Remove Your Shoes
by Lita Robinson
Everyone can relate to the singular combination of apprehension and humiliation that is the modern airport experience. Not only must you display your personal items to everyone in the vicinity (Prescriptions! Underwear! Tampons!) but you are forced to make the walk through the metal detectors and the gauntlet of wand-wielding agents without even the dignity of shoes. Everyone wonders, at one point or another, whether all these charades are actually doing any good in keeping us safe.
Please Remove Your Shoes would succinctly answer no. Through extensive interviews with ex-Air Marshals, government officials and reporters, this documentary examines the advent of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) in the wake of 9/11, painting a disturbing picture of waste, inefficiency, and abuse of power. The former Marshals, several of whom have specific expertise in aviation-based terrorism, describe a “nonexistent” security system before 9/11, and a bureaucratic nightmare after.
The TSA is supposed to bring together intelligence and aviation security know-how in order to thwart future terrorist incidents. It is the government body responsible for all the scanners and gel/liquid bans and other brouhaha that travelers now have to deal with. However, the film’s interviewees repeatedly emphasize how the TSA exhibits the worst sorts of inefficiency: people with no experience are promoted for being “yes men,” intelligence isn’t shared because the agency wants to one-up the FBI and CIA, and huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are spent on technologies, such as bomb-sniffing scanners, that can’t even perform the functions they were designed for. Most disturbingly, the ex-Marshals tell us, when they perform routine tests in airports in which they plant bombs and other suspicious materials in their luggage or on their persons, they are almost never caught.
Though there is a whiff of conspiracy theory zeal in some parts of Please Remove Your Shoes, overall the film is surprisingly straightforward about its mission. Instead of resorting to political snarkery—which would be pretty easy in this context—the filmmakers keep things moving and stay on message. Indeed, the filmmakers’ decision not to include footage of the actual 9/11 attacks demonstrates that they don’t feel the need to resort to scare tactics in order to get their point across. The end result is polished and professional looking; the cinematography and editing are first-rate, and the film overall is authoritative and compelling.
Anyone who wants to get an inside view of our not-so-friendly skies will find Please Remove Your Shoes very informative. But be warned: it may make you think twice before you catch your next flight.
Tags: 9/11, please remove your shoes, TSA
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Review: Splice
by Lita Robinson
The buzz about Splice has been almost universally positive. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times described it as “a lot of unnerving fun,” and David Edelstein, on Fresh Air, lauded it as “a strange and wonderful brew!” I agree wholeheartedly with these assessments…but only as they apply to the first half of the film.
Let me explain. The film starts out entirely in a good direction—we’re introduced to Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), glamorous scientists working on the bleeding edge—literally—of biology. (Already we’re surrounded by horror movie lore: Clive is a reference to Colin Clive, the actor who played Dr. Frankenstein in the 1931 classic, and Elsa refers to Elsa Lanchester, the actress who wore the wig as the titular Bride of Frankenstein.) They’re hard at work synthesizing new life forms, and the beginning of the film delves right into all sorts of squishy, uncomfortable subjects like abortion, infertility treatment and the grey area between a “bunch of cells” and an actual being. The dialogue may be a little stilted but there’s just the right mixture of tension and introspection to make things interesting. So far, so good.
Inevitably the two scientists experience a fall from grace, which in this case is brought on by their ill-advised decision to mix human DNA in with one of their experiments. The resulting creature, Dren (“nerd” backwards) comes into the world violently, injuring Elsa in the process—a sign of things to come. As Dren evolves from being tiny and rodent-like to being obviously part human, it is clear that Elsa harbors affection for her that goes way beyond scientific interest. By explicitly linking the feminine with the biologically transgressive, Splice harkens back to some of the great horror/sci-fi films: Demon Seed (1977) and The Brood (1979) are the most obvious examples, but the film alludes to everything from the Frankenstein series to the Alien films to another Cronenberg masterpiece, The Fly (1986).
Unlike Cronenberg’s films, which stayed true to their cringe-inducing purposes to the bitter end (and became legendary in the process), Splice makes a violent turn about halfway through, refocusing on Dren as a proxy child at the center of an Oedipal merry-go-round and abandoning its initial concern with much more interesting subjects, like, you know, the nature of being human. Instead of exploring the social consequences of creating a semi-human hybrid, the film devolves into a bizarre, futuristic soap opera; Clive becomes attracted to Dren, and Elsa’s dormant maternal instincts reveal themselves to be alternately tender and so cruel that she seems like a transplant from a Brian De Palma film.
In fact, De Palma is an apt figure to invoke here. I’ll spare you the details of how everything ends—my theater laughed through the last half hour, so you can bet it wasn’t good—but suffice it to say that the moral of the story turns out to be yet another cautionary tale about the dangers of women in general and motherhood in particular. Think Carrie meets Alien, but…bad. Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) and executive producer Guillermo Del Toro had all the elements in place to make the next great horror/sci-fi film, or at least the next passable one. Instead Splice ends up being its own special hybrid: half great, half awful.
Tags: adrien brody, dren, sarah polley, splice
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Review: Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
by Lita Robinson
Living in Emergency is a great medical drama—like ER or Grey’s Anatomy, it is charged with adrenaline. Its characters must constantly choose between the lesser of various evils, and in their spare moments they debate the ethics of saving one patient instead of another, or of abandoning their patients altogether. Unlike those pop-medical shows, however, Emergency is all the more compelling because everything in it is real. That’s because the film follows four volunteer physicians who each spend 6 months working on “missions” for Medecins Sans Frontiers, or Doctors Without Borders.
All the doctors are stationed in incredibly impoverished parts of Liberia and the Congo, countries that have been rent apart by decades of war. As they struggle against insurmountable problems—one nearly snaps because no one can ship him any sterile gloves—the filmmakers give us an unvarnished view of what life and medicine in these places is actually like. Suddenly, we’re in an operating theater as a doctor uses a hand-cranked drill to put a hole in a man’s skull (he lives). A moment later, a second doctor matter-of-factly mentions over breakfast that the child he has been trying to revive all morning has abruptly died. People are shot for no reason; children die of diseases that would easily be cured in the West.
That’s the most shocking thing about this documentary; it is devoid of histrionics. The fact that the filmmakers allow their subjects to speak for themselves, at length, turns the film into something more than just a document of their collective experience. Instead, Emergency becomes something huge, weighty and allegorical. One young doctor realizes that she can’t continue doing this work indefinitely, and her imminent departure from the people she’s grown attached to nearly wrenches her apart. An older doctor, who has been on many missions, tells the audience frankly that for him death has become an everyday occurrence rather than a monumental event. He looks exhausted and rubs his eyes.
All the doctors realize that at best they are making a temporary improvement to a desperate humanitarian situation. As the film goes on, each of them has to make peace with the fact that they can only do so much, and then they must extricate themselves in order to keep from being totally overwhelmed. The film is eloquent and well-constructed enough that it can show the plight of people in this part of the world without being sanctimonious or patronizing.
Indeed, its neutral but urgent tone is what makes it so compelling—the film doesn’t tell, it shows.
After having made the festival circuit in 2009, Living in Emergency will be in limited release in New York beginning June 4th. I highly recommend it—but you may want to pass on the popcorn.
Tags: doctors without borders, living in emergency
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Editor’s Pick: Earth Made of Glass
by Steven Eliau
This riveting documentary, taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass,“ centers on Jean-Pierre Sagahutu and his emotional journey to find the men responsible for the 1994 murder of his father and family in Rwanda. Sagahutu’s father, a prominent Tutsi doctor in the town of Kibuye, was executed along a road near his house after the militia had ruthlessly slaughtered Sagahutu’s mother and seven siblings before his eyes.
Sagahutu survived the massacre by hiding dozens of feet underground in a sewer for two months. A local villager periodically lowered food to Sagahutu, who rationed his food as he had no idea how long he would have to remain hidden.
The film is not a typical war documentary, with news footage of carnage seared in our minds. Instead, it’s a journey of hope, discovery and redemption that takes place 15 years after the brutal African genocide, where a staggering figure of over a million people were brutally slaughtered in a three-month span.
The film deftly balances history of the conflict with Sagahutu’s struggle for closure as he returns to his hometown of Kibuye.
Filmmaker and Tribeca Film Festival alum, Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) delivers a wonderful and heartfelt documentary, allowing us to see what Sagahutu witnesses and takes us on a compelling, fact-finding journey.
Sagahutu has vowed to find his father’s killer, not out of vengeance, but rather to bring a sense of closure and reasoning to a time and place where only madness prevailed. Not only wanting to close the chapter on the murders, he feels a sense of duty to his family and two sons whom he feels should know the truth about his past.
His journey culminates in a climactic scene where he confronts one of the men responsible and is finally able to reach the closure he has so desperately sought.
Under President Paul Kagame, Rwanda has proven to be an African success story. Since coming to power in the summer of 1994, he has widely been credited for ending the genocide. The past few years has seen a building boom, cleaner, safer streets, and a more civilized social structure. Kagame, considered a national hero by many, has instituted a system of local tribunals in which citizens serve as judge and jury for those who might or might not have been complicit in the genocide.
Following the end of the conflict in the late summer of 1994, millions fled to nearby Congo, where many responsible for the atrocities found safe haven. Now, 15 years later, President Kagame has been responsible for bringing back many of the refugees – many of whom were killers whose goal was to “ethnically cleanse” the enemy – and rehabilitate them as productive members of society.
Kagame’s belief is that these men’s return to Rwanda as law-abiding citizens is a crucial part of the reconciliation process. Rwandans by and large have accepted this and the arduous process of healing wounds has slowly begun. Because there were so many people responsible for genocide, the truth is many killers will never face trial or receive punishment.
Belgium in the 1930’s literally measured the heads of Rwandans and instituted a social divide by branding two groups The Hutus and the Tutsis. The term Tutsi has been defined by Rwandan historians as those having 10 or more cows and Hutus having less. The change in definition by Colonial powers was the perfect recipe for tyrannical leaders supported by the French government to gestate into genocide.
Perhaps the most important legislation Kagame has been responsible for is changing Rwandan identity cards. Since the end of the war, citizens are no longer identified as a Tutsi or Hutu, slowly removing any stigmas. The terms “Tutsi” and “Hutu” are neither racial nor religious groups but rather contrived social groups created during the time of Colonialism.
Now 80- years later identity cards simply say “Rwandan. “
The film also places much of the blame on France. Hutus, the predominantly French-speaking sect, had despotic leaders who vowed to kill all Tutsis. The documentary explains the main reason for France’s economic and military support for the genocide against the Tutsis as a result of the late Prime Minister Francois Mitterrand’s desire to have a French-speaking Rwanda.
Rwandans have undergone a transformation and nowhere is that more evident than in their capital. Kigali, is now home to a genocide museum, commemorating not only the Rwandan genocide- but the Holocaust and Armenian genocides as well.
Many Rwandans still struggle with the horrors of 1994, and many have been unable to pick up the pieces. Through Sagahutu’s eyes, we see there is hope looking to the future of Rwanda and its citizens.
While many countries stood by and were complicit in the genocide, the soft-spoken Kagame has championed his country into the 21st century with hope. Rose Kabuye, one of Kagame’s closest aides and strongest allies has also been an unwavering leader and pioneer for truth, justice and hope for Rwanda. Imprisoned in Paris by French authorities on questionable charges in November 2008, she was finally released in April 2009 and reunited with her country and family and has remained a leader in Rwanda today.
While the healing is slow and painful, the country is beginning to feel a sense of hope. Kagame, Kabuye and Sagahutu are the true heroes whose determination and love for their country has been nothing short of inspirational.
At the end of the film, Sagahutu’s son summarizes the sentiment of hope. When asked how he identifies himself and his friends, he answers softly “We are all Rwandans.”
Deborah Scranton’s raw, honest and impactful documentary was certainly the highlight of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Tags: deborah scranton, earth made of glass, jean-pierre sagahutu, Paul Kagame, tribeca documentary 2010
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The Hurt Locker DVD Review
The Hurt Locker (2009)
by Lita Robinson
The Hurt Locker stars Jeremy Renner (Dahmer) as William James, an American soldier in Iraq with a special mission: defusing the ubiquitous IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that litter Baghdad’s ghost-town streets. With his two partners, anxious Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and terrified Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) James readily accepts every assignment his team is given, even when it means placing all three of their lives in serious jeopardy. When removing a dozen bombs from the trunk of an abandoned car early in the film, James removes his protective helmet; is this because he is so foolhardy that he feels invincible, or because he is simply at peace with the fact that his death could be only seconds away? His partners, particularly Mackie’s character, seem equally unnerved by both possibilities. The question is whether James is compelled to seek out life-and-death situations because of some perverse obsession, or whether he is simply in touch with the reality of the war on a level few of us care to imagine.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winner is set in Iraq in 2004, only a year after the war’s inception. However, it is this strange, new, disjointed image of the war that translates into what New Yorker critic David Denby calls “the most skillful and emotionally involving picture yet made about the conflict.” Unlike Rendition and other star-studded films ostensibly about the war (the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate comes to mind) The Hurt Locker has no interest in advancing a specific agenda, political or otherwise. Rather, it is that rare war picture that actually maintains its focus on the strange mixture of the frightful and the quotidian that its subjects, the soldiers, must endure.
Bigelow’s film doesn’t veer into either melodrama or propaganda, which is itself a remarkable achievement considering its subject matter. However, what really keeps the narrative taut to the point of anguish are the prolonged, real-time scenes in which James and his partners are either defusing bombs or being attacked by insurgents. There’s no John Williams score here, no platitudes or histrionics–indeed, British leading man Ralph Fiennes makes a brief appearance only to be picked off almost instantly by an enemy sniper. In a normal Hollywood film, the big names don’t get killed off in under five minutes–that’s practically an unwritten law.
But that’s exactly what Bigelow wants to accomplish in dispatching first Pearce and then Fiennes with so little pomp and circumstance: she wants the audience to feel as vulnerable and panicked as James and his squad do, and boy, does it work. Even the final scene of the film, in which James is back in the States with his girlfriend and baby son, hums with an unspoken tension. It’s clear to the audience, if not to the unfortunate girlfriend, that James just isn’t wired for civilian life, at least not anymore. The film closes with a shot of James back in the bomb-defusing suit, marching triumphantly towards the next bomb in the sand. We understand, as the credits start to roll, that James has been so changed by his experiences in the war that he simply cannot go back to the way things were. What the film hints at, so delicately you may not even notice, is that the country as a whole may not ever be able to go back, either.
Bigelow was only the fourth woman in history to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar (in 82 years, no less) and the first to win. That this momentous event was occasioned by a war movie is both a testament to Bigelow’s skill in directing within a completely male-dominated genre, and a strange sort of capitulation from the Hollywood establishment. It’s worth noting that the first woman to break this glass ceiling was not someone like Nancy Meyers (Sleepless in Seattle) or Sally Potter (Orlando) or even Jane Campion, though she was nominated in 1993 for her tour-de-force The Piano. Certainly, the first woman to be let into this ultimate boy’s club couldn’t have directed a chick flick or a gender-bending feminist manifesto–perish the thought. It seems like the Academy had its collective hand forced with Bigelow’s nomination; she pulled off a manly film in a manly genre, and beat Hollywood at its own game.
Jeremy Renner also has been long overlooked for his award-worthy talents. Though his first leading-man role was in the somewhat unfortunate Dahmer (2002) Renner didn’t allow the cartoonishly evil character he was playing to overwhelm him–somehow, he kept his performance human and believable. Renner also has a reassuringly non-airbrushed look to him, physically; he actually looks like a real person. His physicality is a major part of his character in The Hurt Locker, and, just as in Dahmer, he knows how to use his body, affect and appearance to give full life to his character. I’d rather watch him than Sam Worthington (Avatar) any day.
Tags: hurt locker, Jeremy Renner, Kathryn Bigelow
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Tribeca Review: Zonad
By Marlow Stern
A crowd of Irish stargazers gathers one night in the tiny town of Ballymoran (rhymes with: “moron”). Suddenly, there’s a flash in the sky, followed by the town drunk hollering some nonsense about aliens, before being laughed off by the townspeople. Moments later, the Cassidy family – Dick (Geoff Minogue), Mary (Donna Dent), son Jimmy (Kevin Maher) and nubile daughter Jenny (Janice Byrne) – return home only to find a portly bloke in a skin-tight red vinyl suit and helmet unconscious on the floor and their home in shambles. The gullible clan – straight out of 1950s-era “Pleasantville” – believe the being to be none other than an extraterrestrial named ‘Zonad’ (Simon Delaney).
Co-directors (and brothers) John and Kieran Carney, working from their own screenplay, never make any secret of Zonad’s identity (he’s a fall-down drunk escapee from a rehab center costume party) or his intentions (to bed every schoolgirl – and cougar – nympho in town). Zonad gets so wrapped up in the welcome reception he gets from the simpleminded people of Ballymoran – free drinks at the local pub, sex with a different girl every night – that he forgets his fellow escapee/inmate (David Pearse), whom he left in the woods in a gorilla suit. But don’t fret; this lascivious charlatan will soon be fed his humble pie.
Before being seduced by Zonad, Jenny had pledged her “flower” to the ambiguously straight Guy (Rory Keenan) – and attractive, silver spoon-fed simpleton who, oblivious to Jenny’s sexual advances, shuns them in favor of rides on the “guycycle” and arched-eyebrow looks with his guyliner-sporting butler, Benson (David Murray). The duo soon band together with a few other locals to form an anti-Zonad posse. Their efforts prove extraneous when Zonad’s fellow escapee (Pearse) hobbles into the local vintage clothing store, eyes a blue latex jumpsuit and assumes the identity of Bonad, Zonad’s superior officer in the star fleet. The clueless Ballymoranians, of course, swallow the whole thing down like a tasty pint of Guinness (as is their wont). Bonad’s lays on his alien shtick even thicker than Zonad, and soon, Bonad supplants Zonad as the town demigod and is, well… living up to his name with all the local hussies, including Jenny. Everything comes to a head when the two frauds duke it out in a cocaine and booze-fueled boxing match, set to the opening theme of “Raging Bull.”
It’s hard to believe that this perverted, outlandish yarn comes (in part) from the same mind, John Carney’s, that birthed the naturalistic love story “Once.” Here, subtle grace has been replaced by flagrant fatuity, and, despite Delaney’s best efforts, a five-minute comedy sketch is stretched-out more than Zonad’s figure-hugging suit (the film was adapted from a 2003 short that was never released). The only likeness to that poignant Irish musical comes in the form of a pair of inspired musical numbers that bookend the film. And the only clue that all this ridiculousness take place in the present – and not in the 1950s, as ubiquitous naïveté suggests, is the mention of a stolen DVD player; a destination where, in all likelihood, you’ll one day get to see this film.
ZONAD still lacks a U.S. distributor.
Tags: john carney, kieran carney, marlow stern, once, simon delaney, zonad
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Tribeca Review: Please Give
By Marlow Stern
Whereas writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s last film, 2006’s “Friends with Money,” centered around a maid struggling to come to terms with her wealthy friends, her latest foray into the recession-plagued female psyche concerns an introverted mammogram technician, a reseller of second hand goods and the pesky Manhattan real estate market.
Sure, Holofcener may have a preoccupation with the corrupting influence of money, but the opening mammogram montage of “Please Give” – showcasing breasts of every shape, sag and size – offers a penetrating intro into the film’s intriguing commentary on the objectification of women in Hollywood (an issue Holofcener willingly subverts) and the perils of aging.
The characters that inhabit the world of “Please Give” rely not on the kindness of others, but rather on the pain and personal anguish of the infirm. The woman administering the mammograms is Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), an anomic – albeit attractive – woman whose blind devotion to her senile 91-year-old grandmother, Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), cripples any semblance of a social life. Rebecca refers to breasts as, “tubes of potential damage,” for starters. Andra’s apartment is owned by her next-door neighbors, married couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), who run a successful vintage furniture store. The dynamic duo specializes in purchasing the goods off the recently-deceased elderly at a bargain and reselling them for huge markups. They’re waiting for the old kook to croak so they can renovate/expand their already spacious Manhattan apartment – a predicament that makes their hallway run-ins with Rebecca a wee bit awkward.
Out of guilt, Kate invites Rebecca, her tanned sister Mary (Amanda Peet), a vain spa facialist who takes after her grandma, and the ornery Andra, over for supper with the family, which is rounded out by Kate and Alex’s 16-year-old daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), who comes to the dinner table with her face obscured in underwear in an effort to hide a gigantic pimple. The dinner has unintended results for all parties involved and jump starts a story about human frustration, insecurity, and, in true Holofcener fashion, teeming with acerbic, witty dialogue.
“Please Give” marks Holofcener’s fourth collaboration with actress Catherine Keener, who usually serves as Holofcener’s mouthpiece in her films. In “Friends with Money,” Keener played a woman whose creative collaboration with her husband – the two are successful co-screenwriters – frustrates her. Here, she plays a woman struggling to come to grips with possessing monetary wealth, and the means by which she’s amassed it. Kate’s attempts to rid herself of the all-consuming guilt that her station provides – including a failed attempt at volunteer work, purchasing a grandma couch and doling out $20 bills to the homeless – results in some of the film’s most tragicomic scenarios.
Though Keener is the mouthpiece, it’s Rebecca Hall who is the film’s moral center and offers it’s finest performance. Rebecca’s character bears the least resemblance to a sitcom character type – unlike Platt’s midlife crisis-sufferer or Peet’s vainglorious, jealous wreck – instead offering a light journey from social awkwardness to awareness of life’s wonderful gifts.
The film, like all those in Holofcener’s canon, constructs a narrative around a series of playful vignettes exhibiting clashing personalities and worldviews. Though some may criticize this method for providing characters lacking the requisite depth, in places like Manhattan, sometimes that’s all you can afford.
PLEASE GIVE opens on April 30th in New York and Los Angeles.
Tags: amanda peet, catherine keener, marlow stern, nicole holofcener, please give, rebecca hall, tribeca film festival 2010
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In The Loop (2009)
by Lita Robinson
In The Loop is a frantic British farce that imagines the beginning of the war in Iraq as one giant miscommunication between British politicians, who are incompetent and American politicians, who are crazy.
The story centers on Toby (Chris Addison) a young aide to Minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, excellent as always). When the film opens, Foster has just gone on a well-known British radio program to discuss his opposition to the British and American governments’ desire to go to war together against Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, when the interviewer ambushes him with an Iraq-related question, Foster’s bumbling response ends up sounding like an endorsement of the impending military offensive.
Soon, Foster is being hounded by the Prime Minister’s chief of communications, Malcolm Tucker (played with cheeky venom by Peter Capaldi), who is determined to avoid another public-relations meltdown. Foster’s comments are then picked up by American politicians eager to try and stop the rush to war on their side of the Atlantic, and soon Foster, Tucker, and ingénue Toby are flying back and forth from London to Washington in an effort to clarify Foster’s position on the war.
Naturally, the more everyone else focuses on Foster’s position, the less sure he becomes of what his position really is, and much hilarious dithering ensues. The film ends in almost as much chaos as it begins, with Toby now woefully educated on the dangers of political talking points, and both the British and American governments still steaming together towards impending war.
The storyline of this film is really less important than its structure, which is essentially just a series of gaffe-filled vignettes strung together with breathtaking speed. The film’s director, Armando Iannucci (whose screenplay has been nominated for both a BAFTA and an Oscar) has lots of experience in television, and that sort of smash-cut sensibility is what animates the film. Imagine “Notting Hill,” but on fast-forward, full of truly amazing obscenities, and about war rather than love.
James Gandolfini’s appearance as a retired Army general trying to stop the rush to war is especially inspired (choice quote: “Once you’ve been to war, you never want to go back unless you absolutely have to. It’s like France.”). In fact, the cast as a whole works together very well, with each insane political operative acting even crazier than the last. Watch this film if you’re a fan of Dr. Strangelove and other classic war satires—just be prepared for some updated, truly R-rated language.
Tags: in the loop
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SHUTTER ISLAND: Red Herrings and Cellos, and Accents! Oh my!
By Marlow Stern
Martin Scorsese’s new psychological thriller “Shutter Island” opens with Leonardo DiCaprio vomiting into a rusted toilet surrounded by chains and various metallic objects. Beads of sweat pour off his forehead. He stares into the mirror to collect himself. Suddenly, “THRUM…THRUM…THRUM!” The wailing cellos of Robbie Robertson’s score explode through the screen like a foghorn. Apparently, this murky island housing a neo-gothic mental asylum for the criminally insane is one scary place.
One of our most celebrated filmmakers, and a compulsive film buff, Scorsese’s latest foray into genre film – an adaptation of Boston crime novelist Dennis Lehane’s 1950s period piece – is, to put it lightly, completely overwrought. The film seems like his attempt at replicating the suspenseful atmosphere of Kubrick’s “The Shining,” but is left literally bursting at the seams with plot points – a Class 5 hurricane that traps everyone on the island, WWII flashbacks, and, last but not least, the spooky asylum itself housing, as is customary of Lehane’s oeuvre, plenty of secrets.
We ah dooly appointed fedral mahshals, announces DiCaprio as he enters the island. DiCaprio, suffering a bout of Stockholm syndrome with his accent from previous Scorsese flick “The Departed,” is Teddy Daniels, who’s on his way to the high security asylum on Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of murderous inmate Rachel Solando. The inmate’s escape seems like a particularly improbable departure – perhaps, fictional – considering she managed to escape from a locked cell, past a whole mess of orderlies, and out into the stormy wilderness. Barefoot.
Teddy is joined in the investigation by his newly appointed partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), a Seattle transplant with, oddly enough, a heavy Boston accent all his own. And, every disturbed inmate that the pair of marshals interviews just rambles, rolls their eyes, puts their finger to their mouth, or, better yet, frantically scribble, “RUN” on a notepad. Worse are the people in charge, led by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a pipe-smoking, curiously mild-mannered man in a bowtie who advocates talk-based therapy over lobotomizing, and his suave colleague Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), who, Teddy suspects, believes just the opposite. As a World War II vet who took part in the liberation of Dachau, Teddy is especially suspicious of this pair of urbane intellectuals, perhaps thanks to their strong resemblance to a certain Goebbels and Mengele.
Teddy, however, does not inspire our utmost confidence. He suffers from constant migraines thanks to his dead wife (Michelle Williams) and possible PTSD from his WWII experience. He also, in the films most impressive technical sequences, experiences vivid, hallucinatory dreams that reunite him with his lost lover. As Teddy navigates the claustrophobic world of Shutter Island, we soon learn that all the riddles, vague conversations and scattered clues may point to something far greater being cooked up in this miserable place.
DiCaprio puts forth his best furled brow/snarl as the tormented protagonist, but the film is handcuffed by Scorsese’s inconsistent direction, a third act twist seen from a mile away, a scattershot, red herring-filled screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis, whose previous credits, “Pathfinder” and “Alexander,” were unmitigated disasters, and, lest we forget, that awful, booming score by Robbie Robertson. The music is reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s work for Hitchcock, if it were shoved into a wood chipper, as opposed to his subtle, transfixing score for Scorsese’s own “Taxi Driver.”
Scorsese has always been one of cinema’s most celebrated shot-composers and montage-makers, as well as a character study specialist. Sometimes, however, he struggles with story (see: “The Aviator”). In an attempt to do something new – craft a tension-filled psychological thriller with a labyrinthine plot – Scorsese has instead created something that mirrors the recent work of M. Night Shyamalan.
SHUTTER ISLAND opens on February 18th in theaters nationwide.
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