The vessel of these anxieties is Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Teddy Daniels, a United States marshal taking a ferry ride out to the island to inquire in to the disappearance of a patient. Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps excessively fond of his accent from “The Departed,” brings it along for the ride, & it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but they seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle. Michelle Williams pops up in smudgy, color-drenched memories & hallucinations as Teddy’s dead wife, Dolores, her intonations as thick & clammy as chowder.
Those dialect-coached Boston inflections predominate in “Shutter Island,” but are not the only voices heard on the grounds of the asylum, where the patients perambulate like zombies & the orderlies lurk like vengeful specters. Ben Kingsley is Dr. Cawley, the psychiatrist in charge, with silky upper-crust menace in his voice & a diabolical small beard on his chin. Max von Sydow spouts Freudianisms in insinuating Germanic tones that remind Teddy — & of work not only Teddy — of Nazis, an association that helps to induce gratuitous flashbacks of corpses stacked outside death-camp barracks.
“Shutter Island” takes place OFF THE COAST OF MASSACHUSETTS! IN 1954! since every detail & incident in the movie, however minor, is subjected to frantic, demented (& not always unenjoyable) amplification. The wail of strangled cellos accompanies shots of the titular island, a evil, rain-lashed outcropping that is home to a mental hospital for the CRIMINALLY INSANE! The color technique is lurid, & the camera movements telegraph anxiety. Nothing is at it seems. Something TERRIBLE is afoot.
0 comments:
Post a Comment