‘Shutter Island’: A Scorsese ‘entertainment’

It’s been about 36 hours now and I’m still meditating on “Shutter Island,” Martin Scorsese’s new mystery. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane , “Shutter Island” is one of those films that the company that released it - Paramount - could never figure out how to market.

Is it a noir? Is it a classic mystery? Is it horror? Is it a paranormal-horror-noir mystery? Who could tell, given the various ways the trailers have played out for the past six months or so. Which is key. “Shutter Island” was supposed to be in theaters last fall, placed perfectly to warrant Oscar attention.

Only there’s little about the film that’s Oscar-worthy … not unless we’re talking about some of the technical awards. Cinematography, for example, or Foley editing. Certainly there’s nothing about the film that reminds us of Scorsese at his best. This is more “Cape Fear” than “Raging Bull,” more “Bringing Out the Dead” than “Goodfellas.”

Scorsese worked from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis, Razzie-nominated writer of Oliver Stone’s “Alexander,” which might not have been a good idea. Whatever, the story that Kalogridis-Scorsese tell involves Teddy Daniels (Leonardi DiCaprio), a troubled U.S. Marshall who, along with his new partner Chuck Aule, is called to an island in Boston Harbor to investigate a mysterious disappearance.

The island, the Shutter Island of the film’s title, houses a mental institution. Because the movie is set in 1954, one of the themes the film explores is how mental patients are treated. Should they be treated humanely, with compassion and talk therapy, or should they be drugged and/or, in the most radical cases, lobotomized?

The other theme is PTSD, as in the combat fatigue felt by World War II veteran Daniels, who, we see in flashback, was one of the U.S. soldiers who helped liberate the Dachau death camp.

Anyway, the investigation takes place as a storm threatens the island, cutting off the marshals’ return. They interrogate everyone from the facility’s director, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), to his staff (especially the suspicious German-born Dr. Naehring, played by the great Swedish actor Max von Sydow ) and various patients. But they also do their own digging, discovering more and more layers to what’s happening on the island, leading to a mystery resembling Russian Matryoshka dolls - one inside another, inside another and so on.

Ultimately, though, the story plays out much the way it would have in the 1940s. Scorsese gives us a film that, though it seems as if it could be a variation on “The Ring,” is a lot closer to “The Snake Pit.” Or “Suddenly, Last Summer.” Which means, not to give anything away, that the story is more about mental incapacitation than paranormal activity.

Which is bound to disappoint some viewers. It didn’t disappoint me, though not because I think what Scorsese has given us is anything particularly good. It’s just that, because I was misled by the trailers, I wasn’t sure what to expect. And the fact that Scorsese ended up going retro was a surprise in its own right.

Anyway, I stayed with “Shutter Island” until the closing credits. I appreciated the acting of all involved, especially DiCaprio and Kingsley, but also smaller roles such as the great character actors Jackie Earle Haley and Ted Levine . And while I wasn’t all that enthused with the editing of three-time Oscar winner Thelma Schoonmaker (cut-cut-cut), and the CGI felt a bit, well, precious, I liked the rich cinematography of two-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson.

I’ll always watch a Scorsese film. He not only is an artist, but he’s a film historian (I particularly love his documentary “Il mio viaggio in Italia” ). But while “Shutter Island” isn’t exactly a total loss, it hardly ranks among his best. It’s more of what Graham Green would have called “an entertainment.”

Nothing wrong with that. If “Shutter Island” didn’t have Scorsese’s name attached, no one would think twice about calling it a passable way to spend two hours in the dark.

Below : The trailer for “Shutter Island.”