Archive for June, 2010

by MARTIN SCORSESE

WITH: LEONARDO Di CAPRIO, BEN KINGSLEY and MARK RUFFALO

Thanks To Rahma for sending in the article

This week I’ll talk about SHUTTER ISLAND by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo.

We are in 1954 Marshal Teddy Daniels and teammate Chuck Aule are sent to investigate on Shutter Island, in a psychiatric hospital where internees were dangerous criminals. One patient, Rachel Solando has inexplicably disappeared. How deadly she could emerge from a closed cell from the outside? The only clue found in the room is a sheet of paper on which you can read one can read a sequence of numbers and letters without apparent meaning. Is the work consistent with a patient, or Cryptogram? Gradually, the two police officers plunged into a world increasingly opaque and scary, until final shock of truth. The script is based on Denis Lehane’s novel.

Take one of the best current actors, Leonardo Di Caprio, add a first class casting (the ambiguous Ben Kingsley, the mad & furious Jackie Earle and Elias Koteas, the terrifying Emily Mortimer and Michelle Williams the troubling Max Von Sydow and Mark Rufalo) dip them all in the meandering combining psychological twists and infanticide, pyromania, brainwashing lobotomized and suspense in a Gothic atmosphere, amid World War, all neatly orchestrated by a master filmmaker Mr Scorsese : you get the thriller of the year « Shutter Island » ! Chills paranoid guaranteed, without even trying to shedding blood, ne need for that, best art here is to suggest that much …

Whatever you’ve been told about « Shutter Island », get ready for anything else! You’re not just going to watch a movie, but you submit to a collective experience of psychoanalysis under the direction of a great Master filmmaker Martin Scorsese, guided by steps from the talented Leonardo Di Caprio…
Indeed, within the first minutes of the game, the performance of the players who stare, the scary music, replies politely aggressive install the atmosphere of the film, which will remain in torment neurotic doubled from psychosis.

If I tell you that the memory becomes a dream, that the dream becomes hallucinatory, that the hallucinatory becomes real, that reality becomes traumatic that the trauma become neurotic and that neurosis comes over you and why not purify you, the time of a screening. You do not understand anything? This is just normal, but please, do reread these lines after watching the film and you’ll see how you’ll get it all!
No need to design, just a cryptogram, scrawled by a (supposedly) psychopath prisoner is enough to kick off a treasure hunt, you and the Marshall Daniels must unravel the plot over this psychotic trip.
A kind of game in a labyrinth, which even the creators do not seem to be eager to reveal the too well guarded secret, around Shutter Island.

Among the most significant quotes of the movie, here are the ones I noted:
« When you see a monster, it must be stopped »… But what is the monster here, is it the arsonist to the ugly scar? George H.? Or the dubious doctor Coleen? Unless it is the monster, that sleeps deep within the Marshall Daniels, or by yourself, within each one of us…
One thing is certain, the human monster is here, and it reigns in latency, just begging to be awakened from its torpor guided by morals, separating well from evil.
What is the most monstrous, lobotomize of human beings, as criminal and violent as they can be to serve « science » and endless experiments doubtfully military? Or wishing to bring to light, by a thorough investigation, with forced voyeurism, what is happening here? The Marshall will guide you up to the answer …just follow him!
« You are certainly one of those who believe that madness is contagious” launches Marshal Edward Daniels to the security chief of the penitentiary. He was far from imagining that as said George Courteline. “It is comforting to think that if the insanity does not win anything in contact with reason, however, the altered due to contact of Madness ». To understand, keep following the Marshall and don’t give up an inch.

Pretentious is the spectator who will tell you they have understood absolutely everything in the film, and at no time were neither manipulated nor trapped in the subversive labyrinth of Scorsese!

THE POWER OF A SMART ENERGIC SET UP AND WITH NO FAULT

“Shutter Island”, is a stunning screenplay mechanism full of winks film that Scorsese likes to flash. Exacerbation ghostly as referring to Kubrick, des twists as referring to Shyamalan, intoxications of neurotic referring to Lynch, distilled in a suspense account drop as a referring to Hitchcok…Film fans will delight these references anthologies that Scorsese afforded as to renew his own style.
Even if Scorsese’ universe is here intact, with the maze of trompe l’oeil stairs, fatal compositions and musical passages fixtures and felted snobs are facing the wicked rulers.
The scenes cleverly worked, with fields against fields treated relating connections to induce the approaches that American prison laboratory are not so remote in their practices of certain “pseudo-medical experiments” operating on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The military indoctrination justified and perpetuated through brainwashing as vile as disgusting. The only criticism I could make would be too many flashbacks sent too rough, who have confused my mind. But this is certainly what makes the richness and complexity of the film as some would say and make it breathtaking. In short, we like to be manipulated and tested in this skilful way causing a release of serotonin, plus other neurotransmitters and CCK4 specific good thrillers.
Claustrophobic abstain because the film is an insane intensity!

STORY ANALYSIS

The Marshall Teddy Daniels is therefore trying with his teammate to enlighten the mysterious disappearance of the prisoner by the feverish flame of his match; Schedule it in penitentiary‘s shallows the rhythm of a storm that would isolate the island from the rest of the world, the time to investigate.

Gradually, as investigators believe progressing or advancing, over the riddle, the thundering storm rages as the most beautiful sign of divine wrath. From the first minutes of the film, the image of this foggy ferry out of nowhere and heading towards the island, predicted these officers times painful and far from the real world. They wouldn’t suspect the scope of this voyage to hell in this so highly secure penitentiary, yet devoid of safety.

FILM ANALYSIS

The film takes us from the first sequence until the last, to the unstoppable anguish. With the help of the agonizing music, the beginnings of a storm that rumbles amplifying the heavy atmosphere. The viewer can not help but get involved in the game, of the leading actor Leonardo Di Caprio, and with him waver between past and present, dream and reality, reason and madness by psychic transferring that only an excellent staging can afford.
The simple mad story of investigating in a psychiatric environment away from the world on an isolated island would suffice as a substrate thriller.
Nevertheless, the real skill lies in staging intelligent and inspired, rhythm, perfectly studied, appropriate aesthetics and instinctual play of Leonardo Di Caprio engaged body and soul to his role. He, who confesses having pushed his own limits, says: “we did not realize initially how much this film would push our limits”! Indeed, He’d never imagined how he would plunge into paranoia whimsical gothic. Nothing less!

And Martin Scorsese takes us slowly but surely, since the early minutes of the film, through the electrified barbed wire with the sight of a patient with bulging eyes and metal teeth, waving a finger on her mouth as a warning.

As if what is going on at Shutter Island, is as horrible as in a concentration camp Dachau, where Edward Daniels was just past when military staff on duty at the U.S. during the Second World War. We can’t indeed help making the connection with the “medical experiments” done on humans in concentration camps…

As those practiced by the Nazis, including the sadly famous Joseph Mengele, whose doctoral work in the 30s wanted to prove the “superiority” of European type, representing the Aryan ideal …

Besides, this camp has been made infamous by the horrors lab workers who practiced it on human subjects that represented for the Nazis, the Jewish inmates: Experiences absorption of sea water, crystallization of blood solution use of mescaline…

The flashback memory of Marshall Daniels with images of bodies piled on the Dachau camp, are reminiscent of the Institute of Anatomy discovered in 1944 in Strasbourg.
They were reserved for experiments of Professor Hirth … and a certain oxygen bomb intended to remove all traces.
One of the great strengths and great puzzles at once, of this film is that it can be read on multiple dimensions and multiple levels.
Although from my point of view it shows two main aspects, which are THE MADNESS AND THE MOURNING, through a psychological maze that explores the violence pushed up to monstrosity.
The viewer lives hereby and by substitution violent emotions, which affect both the loss of loved ones, bereavement, difficult to accomplish as well as a passive contribution to a crime against humanity.
The players whose performances are so high, that they capture the viewer in mental motion or transferring transmit these powerful emotions. In psychoanalysis a shrink would explain that you are making a purifying so called “catharsis”. A kind of analytical treatment, that occurs, by a process of hypnosis-film of madness.
THE CASTING
On the one hand, we must emphasize the remarkable interpretation of Leonardo Di Caprio, who is masterful bluff. He lays bare the risky overlay of his emotions so that his game is perfectly mastered mad.
Everything is explored by him, fear, anger, resentment, tenderness, regret, sorrow, rage, psychosis, neurosis, and why not say… madness!
It even reaches a breaking point in his performance that tipped the viewer in doubt and in the script’s alienating trap.
Leonardo Di Caprio vacillating between fragility and strength delivers here perhaps his finest performance to date. This kind of game belongs to a tiny bunch of current players, and ranks him in the class of actors renowned as just GREAT. Henceforth, he is one of those whose artistic maturity, never ceases to challenge to reach the top, and thus raise the level of others.
Leonardo Di Caprio, who has made his 4th collaboration with his “mentor” Martin Scorsese (“Gangs of New York”, “The departed”, “Aviator” and “Shutter Island”) has humbly declared “Fingers crossed for work again with director Martin Scorsese, his love of cinema is so contagious that it infects everyone on set”.
Well this is the only kind of contagion that I would welcome open-armed!
Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese declares about his new mascot actor “He’s is a wonderful actor who develops his art. He also matures as a person and it feeds his work”.
Another actor contributes with his charisma to create anguishing atmosphere in this film is Ben Kingsley, who by his mystic face, who by his piercing eyes, who by his ambiguous immaculate appearance, interprets to perfection the role of the psychiatrist Coleen … madly convincing! The only downside is the delay due to the distribution failed to present the film to the 82nd Oscar Ceremony. A missed chance to grab Best Actor Oscar for Leonardo Di Caprio and Best Director Oscar for Marti Scorsese!

SHUTTER ISLAND THE BOOK
However, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about this movie without mentioning the author of the bestselling novel, which he alleges, Dennis Lehane.
This nowadays, writer was a former educator specializing in child abuse, his favourite subject. The author of bestsellers, which has also been driver, and bookseller had probably never imagined that one day the greatest directors like Clint Eastwood (Mystic River) and Martin Scorsese would fight for his novels to adapt them so prodigiously.

WHO IS MARTIN SCORSESE?

Leonardo Di Caprio stated about Martin Scorsese “He is the best director of our time”. I would not contradict him, as I was shaken by “Taxi Driver“ Palm Cannes awarded in 1976, enchanted by “New York New York” released in 1977, then enraged by” Raging Bull ” Oscar winner in 1980, outraged by “The Last Temptation of Christ” or bluffed by “The Color of Money.”

Unless I was most impressed by the “Goodfellas” or “Cape fear,” “Casino” or the recent masterpieces “Departed” and “Gangs of New York”.
All these works that address his favourite topics, such as the American identity through the prism of immigration, Italian, Irish, Jewish communities, banditry, Catholic morality, guilt and redemption, so dear to the American audience.
Nevertheless, the fundamentals underlying most of his films rely on violence and machismo.
The filmmaker inflated humility learned, a lot from John Cassavetes, was influenced by the French nouvelle vague and has also taught a lot to a certain Robert De Niro, who became his mascot player.
Martin Scorsese, award collector, has enabled more his actors/actresses to win Oscars, than he won himself.
So often and often nominated but so seldom rewarded! He had to wait until 2006 to finally receive the Oscar for best director with “Departed”.
In fact he has a filmography that deserves a column all by itself, and yet not obscure works as unusual as masterful!
Nevertheless, what would be the American cinema, nowadays, if the young Martin Scorsese while suffering from asthma and hence excluded from sportive activities had not so assiduously frequented the theatres to watch movies?
And by the way, did you know that Martin Scorsese had, as a great music lover, directed the video clip for the huge « Bad » Michael Jackson’s blockbuster?

SOME FIGURES

For its first weekend, Shutter Island has already earned $ 40.2 million in the United States and Canada, representing 1/3 of total revenue, according to a report from market research firm Exhibitor Relations.
The director of “Taxi Driver” and lead actor of “Titanic” realize the best start of their careers, stresses the U.S. media.

AN UMPTEENTH MASTERPIECE SIGNED SCORSESE?

Perhaps the director wanted to push for intimacy with his audience to the edge of the tolerance limit, as to generate an emotional shock that enabled to acquire the knowledge through visual experience and why not purify further, the evil thoughts that might sully his mind. A kind of catharsis through the play and image is offered.
If the film industry, has the power to entertain, and if Hollywood prides itself on making the “entertainment” its spearhead, Martin Scorsese, meanwhile, who mastered the art of directing good actors and films perfectly, seems to reach Other peaks in the 7th Art.
By pushing his limits and those of his new favourite actor, Leonardo Di Caprio to the ends of the unheard Martin Scorsese, delivers a work as masterly as alienating.

WHY GO SEE THIS FILM?

Because it is a hymn to life! When you quit the theatre, you might find yourself thinking: “I want to LIVE” “To live far away from the fools and those who supposedly take care of them!”

By the way, can madness be treated? If you watch carefully the movie, you might have the answer at the end of screening.
In all cases the only madness that you want is in spite of everything, that of loving to distraction the masterpieces of Master Martin Scorsese.

Decidedly, he knows not only how to vibrate harmoniously his actor’s strings but also, as an alchemist, how to draw up the bottom of Leo Di Caprio’s talent’s bursting wells; and distil a delicious bittersweet liquor, with an aftertaste from a secret Gothic alembic…

Great art signed, the madly terrific Scorsese, for as Aristotle said, “There is no genius without a touch of madness.”

Thanks to Rahma Rachdi for weekly Cinema Chronicle on RMB radio 88.4 FM The radio free as air.