Shutter Island

Started by MacGuffin, October 23, 2007, 12:14:30 AM

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72teeth

you guys are on crack, this was awesome... im high now but i may write more later.
Doctor, Always Do the Right Thing.

Yowza Yowza Yowza

ElPandaRoyal

After I saw it, I thought "well, it's good, but not a great Scorsese movie". Now, almost 24 hours have passed, and I keep being assaulted by shots and scenes from it all the time. It's a nightmare the Scorsese that I actually like a lot more than I originally thought. Great DiCaprio, great visuals, great soundtrack and great ambiguous ending that keeps fucking with my head. It's, it's maybe a little slow in the middle, but it's never boring or out of place. Loved it.

SPOILER MAYBE

Have you guys noticed how Scorsese uses a glass of water in this movie almost to the same effect as he did with Taxi Driver? [Meaning, to show us the mental deterioration of his protagonist.] I loved that, just like I loved all the little details and clues he used all over the movie to comment on what was goin on.
Si

MacGuffin

Quote from: 72teeth on February 27, 2010, 11:05:09 PM
you guys are on crack, this was awesome... im high now but i may write more later.

So your argument is that they naysayers are high that's why they didn't like it. You liked it, but admit you're high.  :yabbse-huh:
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Kal

Quote from: MacGuffin on February 28, 2010, 10:08:46 AM
Quote from: 72teeth on February 27, 2010, 11:05:09 PM
you guys are on crack, this was awesome... im high now but i may write more later.

So your argument is that they naysayers are high that's why they didn't like it. You liked it, but admit you're high.  :yabbse-huh:

crack does bad shit to you and fucks up with your brain... i don't think he was high on crack :)

MacGuffin

So, this is my brain on Shutter Island?


"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

hedwig

non-spoiler review: i saw this and Princess and the Frog this weekend. both are SHIT, but at least the disney film had some good tunes in it. Shutter Island is one of Marty's worst yet. compared to this dud, The Departed is a goddamn masterpiece. this film is two hours of shiny cinematography to keep you distracted while the one-dimensional characters spout endless boring expository dialogue to over-explain the predictable plot. i don't know whether marty considers this "one for him" or "one for them", but more than anything he's done in the last 10 years, this film panders.

and now the spoilers begin: whenever i hear talk of a "twist ending" i am content with the possibility of being underwhelmed by its shock value and more eager to see how it is executed. with that mindset, i was not disappointed when i figured out that teddy was a patient in the hospital like 30 mins into the film. i kept hoping the 'twist' would at least unravel in a compelling way, but instead i am forced to sit through scene after scene of characters reiterating the storyline to each other, intercut with shots of leo freaking out. it felt like a zillion other movies we've all seen before.

as far as the kubrick comparisons go (two posts here calling this scorsese's Shining): there's obviously no comparison in terms of quality. both films explore the mind as it manifests in an isolated environment. the similarities end there. The Shining stays true to its subject by giving the audience no delusions of objectivity and NO ESCAPE from the confusion/horror endured by the characters. the most affecting moments in The Shining are never explained. they come out of nowhere. on the other hand, Shutter relies on cliché in every department. the filmmakers clearly do not want the audience to be confused. flashbacks recur at predictable intervals along with corny CGI-showcase dream sequences. all symbolism gets explained away. and somehow, the character feels one-dimensional even after he is revealed to have multiple personalities.

OH WELL,

Quote from: hedwig on June 11, 2009, 07:01:55 AM
give me Silence or give me death.


tpfkabi

Quote from: ©brad on February 23, 2010, 04:43:17 PM
I think this would have been way scarier and ultimately more compelling had they gone really low-budge, especially with the dream sequences which suffered from being so overt and cgi-ish.

At the beginning all the CGI skies were overdone.

First theater experience I've had in a while. I can understand any criticisms about the film, but I enjoyed it. I think I have to accept that a B-movie story line does not neccesarily cheapen a movie to me if it's done well.

It felt all Kubrick-y and Hitchock-y - I know the soundtrack - the huge score just when they were entering the gates - think of how plain that sequence is and how it's taken to another place with the score. Now that some time has passed, I'm already forgetting other stuff I liked.

Here's a question - if everything was the same, but there was no twist, it turned out to be true, would you like it more?








****spoiler***
of course there is a litle twist/twist in that he choses the labotomy.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

squints

I think to really get this film you have to understand what scorsese was aiming for here. Its like his own Hitchcock film, but it has to be the way he would have made the picture then, only making it now. But the way he would have made it then. If he was alive now, making this now, he would make it now as if he made it back then.
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: squints on March 01, 2010, 05:26:51 PM
I think to really get this film you have to understand what scorsese was aiming for here. Its like his own Hitchcock film, but it has to be the way he would have made the picture then, only making it now. But the way he would have made it then. If he was alive now, making this now, he would make it now as if he made it back then.

I don't think Scorsese goes the full route to make it a homage film. As I said in my review, he's mixing so many modern elements with classical elements he's continually facing an identity crisis of what the film wants to be. The over embellished skies, the pychological deconstruction of DiCaprio's character and the thriller elements are all classical psychology (Hitchcockian), but the exuberant fantasy scenes of horror and other sensory disturbances are more modern. Hitchcock only experimented with sensory overload a few times and mainly that was a scene or two in movies like Vertigo and Spellbound. Hitchcock never had an interest to make them a majority of a visual story, but Scorsese is always treading on doing that in this film.

Hitchcock was more about changing our understanding of visual compositions and changing how we see the sightlines of action, like focusing on the object that would kill someone instead of the person doing the killing. Or during a chase scene, starting to alter the comfort of the editing patterns by making them obstruct normality in different ways. Scorsese does that when the movie starts to pick up tension, but he's mixing too many other elements for his homage efforts to be sincere. In the end, both elements are underdeveloped by Scorsese.

I also agree with people who say the story was too expounding for its own good. The film wants you to be drawn into it's story, but it continually makes self conscious remarks about how it is a mind puzzling story and it's making you question the plot before it fully warps you into a new reality. The self conscious identity continues when the reveals feel too superficial to be fascinating, but even if the reveals were better, the set up itself would have been disappointing anyways.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Quote from: Derek on February 26, 2010, 07:41:10 PM
Quote from: // w ø l r å s on February 26, 2010, 12:59:02 PM
Quote from: kal on February 25, 2010, 02:23:39 AM
No, need to overanalyze everything.

Well, I'm not sure if this comment is directed at me.

The editing at the beginning gives the film an energy that seems to dissipate further into the film with long exposition scenes.

Done thinking now, I'll go back to breathing through my mouth.

It wasn't directed at you, I was fixing the typos in kal's post.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

MacGuffin

Man stabbed with meat thermometer at movie in CA

LANCASTER, Calif. - Authorities say a man was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer after asking a woman to silence her cell phone during a screening of the film "Shutter Island" at a Southern California movie theater.

Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore says the stabbing happened Feb. 27 during a screening of the Martin Scorsese film in Lancaster. He says the two suspects remain at large.

Whitmore says the victim had complained about a woman sitting nearby who was talking on her phone during the movie. He says the woman left with two men, but the men returned minutes later and stabbed the victim in the neck.

Two other people in the theater came to the victim's aid and also were hurt. The man was hospitalized with serious injuries.

The sheriff's office says it knew the weapon used was a meat thermometer because the suspects left it behind. No further details were released.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Alexandro

SPOILERS OF COURSE

To be fair, I might have to see this again. On a purely narrative level it was very disappointing. And for all I had heard about Scorsese being all pyrothecnic and manic, the whole film feels very restrained visually. A lot of standard camera movements for him, and almost nothing memorable visually. Also unusual is how little humor it has.

Of course my main beef was with the supposed "twist", which I figured about 20 minutes in and in fact thought it wasn't even a twist. It was so obvious I was like "ok, so he's a patient there, what else?" and to my astonishment, the film went on and on without fulling acknowledging this and moving forward to something else. And yes, it was weird how much dialogue was wasted on this plot. In fact everything felt weird and not very disturbing. Don't get the Shinning or Hithchcock comparisons at all, it would be a disservice to those films.

Frankly I'm so surprised by how the whole film plays that I'm thinking maybe there's some irony I'm missing, or something, because it's hard for me to even begin to understand why this film was even made with such talent involved. So after my second viewing I'll add some more to this.

ElPandaRoyal

SPOILERS!

The thing is, you really need to read more into the film than what the screenplay tells you. People talk about knowing about the twist 20 minutes in, but the truth is, the ending doesn't clarify anything. What if Teddy is really a sane person and his wife died in a fire, and all that talk about him being a patient there is only a conspiracy to make him stop investigating about the place? What if the meds they gave him actually messed with his mind so much so that he doesn't know anymore what's real and what's not? What I love about this movie is that it's never clear, for a mere second, about where the ending leaves us. And that's what makes Shutter Island far more satisfying than your average thriller.
Si

mogwai

Saw this last friday at the cinema and fell asleep after one hour. I frequently woke up under the last 30 minutes but nothing made me interested. I guess it wasn't the Marty/DiCaprio masterpiece I was rooting for. I'll give it another try when it's out on DVD.

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on March 15, 2010, 08:59:56 AM
SPOILERS!

The thing is, you really need to read more into the film than what the screenplay tells you. People talk about knowing about the twist 20 minutes in, but the truth is, the ending doesn't clarify anything. What if Teddy is really a sane person and his wife died in a fire, and all that talk about him being a patient there is only a conspiracy to make him stop investigating about the place? What if the meds they gave him actually messed with his mind so much so that he doesn't know anymore what's real and what's not? What I love about this movie is that it's never clear, for a mere second, about where the ending leaves us. And that's what makes Shutter Island far more satisfying than your average thriller.

Spoilers
Then why would the last scene exist, where Mark Ruffalo is checking his sense of reality and DiCaprio's character is back to acting his original ways and Ruffalo has to nod to everyone that he has regressed back to insanity and delusion? It's a clarification scene of who is crazy because 1.) to believe in DiCaprio's position is to believe Ruffalo is a detective when he's obviously not and 2.) afterward DiCaprio allows nurses to walk him out like he's used to the patient treatment.