Darkon Island

The ice was a-fallin' in the heartland, this weekend. Big, scary weather, coming down from the North to fuck shit up for everyone.

Well, it wasn't really that bad. Sure, the roads are a bit slick. But it wasn't nearly as bad as the brain dead "meteorologists" thought it would be.

These pricks on TV want you to believe that every storm front moving in is going to destroy your home and rape your children with lightning while its friends hold you down and make you watch. They take this shit too seriously.

We're all fine, here. Just take your blood pressure pills and give me the 5 day forecast.

But I braved "ICEOCALYPSE '10" this weekend, heading out to the Cinema to see director Martin Scorsese's latest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, "Shutter Island".

You know there's a twist in this movie, right? Didn't the trailers make it a little obvious? Of course, the film is based on a novel published in 2003, so anybody who bothered to read Dennis Lehane's book of the same name probably saw the twist coming. At least, I hope they did. If they didn't, then this country is truly screwed.

"You expect me to remember something from a book I read seven years ago?! What are you, fucking Albert Einstein? Remembering shit you read?!"

Sorry about that.

SPOILERY BREAKDOWN TIME!!!

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a Federal Marshal sent to investigate the disappearance of an especially disturbed mental patient at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, located on the remote Shutter Island, in the year 1954.

Accompanied by his new partner, Chuck Aule, played by Mark Ruffalo, he arrives on the island just ahead of a very rough storm, effectively trapping him with the demented denizens of the maximum security loony bin.

But Teddy has a secret reason for coming to Shutter Island. His wife was killed in a fire started by an unstable arsonist named Andrew Laeddis several years ago, and he recently discovered that Laeddis has been a patient at Ashecliffe Hospital's secretive Ward C, reserved only for the most dangerous and violent patients at the facility.

Teddy has learned many disturbing rumours about what truly goes on in Ward C, based on several in-depth conversations with a former patient.

When he heard about the disappearance of Rachel, a patient who drowned her three children before being admitted to Ashecliffe, Teddy volunteers to investigate. But he really wants to find out what cruel experiments the hospital's chief physician, Dr. John Cawley (played by Ben Kingsley) is performing on the patients of Ward C.

But after arriving on the island, Teddy's mind begins to play tricks on him. He has vivid dreams involving his dead wife and the man who killed her. He dwells on his service in World War II, liberating the Dachau concentration camp, and the slaughter of the Nazi officers stationed there. Has Dr. Cawley drugged him? Is the mad doctor slowly driving Teddy insane, because he knows why the U.S. Marshal is really there?

With a storm closing in, and his sanity crumbling, can Teddy find the missing Rachel, uncover evidence of the nefarious Dr. Cawley's secret agenda, and discover the identity of the mysterious "Patient 67"?

No. Because it's all bullshit.

Andrew Laeddis was a U.S. Marshal. After returning home following WWII, he married his sweetheart Dolores and they had three children.

But the pressures of his job keeping him away from home for weeks at a time, coupled with his lingering issues concerning his service in the military, drove him to the bottle and kept him emotionally distant from his mentally deteriorating wife.

One beautiful day, he returned home to find Dolores sitting in the backyard, drenched in water, and their three children floating face-down in the nearby lake. Consumed with grief, Andrew shoots his wife and promptly loses his mind, eventually becoming a patient at Ashecliffe Hospital.

Andrew created "Teddy Daniels" to cope with his grief, looking for conspiracies where they don't exist, searching for the truth while hiding in a comforting lie.

Two years after Andrew arrives at Ashecliffe, Dr. Cawley comes up with a brilliant idea to make Andrew face the truth and come to terms with his past: LARPing!

Yes, the good doctor orchestrates the most elaborate Live Action Role Playing experiment, before "LARP" was even an acronym, involving the entire hospital staff, even the fucking batshit crazy patients, all pretending that Laeddis really is "Teddy Daniels", investigating the disappearance of a mental patient who doesn't exist, all so Laeddis can come to grips with the fact that he's really a lunatic who murdered his wife after she drowned their kids.

If only Dr. Cawley were around to treat poor Robbie Wheeling during the "Mazes & Monsters" craze of 1982.

So that's the "twist". A big role-playing game, the size of which defies credibility, to say the least. Now the viewer's enjoyment of the film largely depends upon whether or not one can buy this conceit.

For some, the film completely falls apart once the truth is revealed, and they immediately check out of the narrative. For others, the twist just adds a new layer to the story, and a subsequent viewing will allow these people to enjoy the entire film in a new light.

I knew the "twist" coming into the film. It sounded stupid to me, based purely on the sheer logistics of Dr. Cawley's experiment. How the fuck could he pull off a game like this? It just screams "unbelieveable".

Sure, it sounds like an innovative way to break through a mental patient's defenses, in order to effectively treat their illness. In fact, psychiatrists perform exercises like this frequently, although not on this incredible (and irresponsibly dangerous) scale.

It was still a little hard for me to swallow.

But knowing what was coming didn't really matter, because Martin Scorsese apparently realized how stupid the twist was, too. He made precious little effort to hide the truth, telegraphing it in the opening scenes of the film. Most reasonably intelligent people will figure out that Teddy Daniels is Andrew Laeddis long before Laeddis himself figures it out.

Scorsese doesn't even play "the twist" like a twist. He clearly doesn't want to shock the audience with a "brilliant shocking twist that will suckerpunch your balls through your empty head".

It's played more for the benefit of the Andrew Laeddis character than for the audience. It's a cathartic moment for the damaged psyche of a mentally ill man, not a moment to make the viewer shout "Shit, I never saw that coming!"

Teddy believes that the true evidence of Dr. Cawley's mad experiments lies in the island's isolated lighthouse. He waits until low tide and crosses the divide between Shutter Island and the small atoll upon which the lighthouse resides. He knocks out a guard and steals his rifle.

He enters the lighthouse and scales the stairs, going from empty room to empty room, music swelling as he ascends. He finally reaches the top, kicking in the door...

...and the music stops dead. Teddy sees Dr. Cawley sitting behind a desk, seemingly waiting for him. His partner Chuck enters behind him, dressed in a sharp suit. Teddy wants to know the truth. So Dr. Cawley tells him the truth. And Teddy passes out.

The entire sequence was brilliantly set up. The way the camera follows Teddy up the spiraling stairs, the booming music abruptly cutting out the moment he enters Dr. Cawley's room at the top of the lighthouse, like the music was playing for Teddy, some suspenseful soundtrack to the conspiracy thriller playing out in his mind.

Absolutely fucking beautiful.

Andrew wakes up in a bed, surrounded by Dr. Cawley and "Chuck", who is actually Andrew's doctor, and he faces the truth. He knows "Teddy" isn't real. He remembers everything. The tragedy in his past, his drowned children, murdering his wife. He blamed himself for what happened, seeing his wife falling apart and ignoring the warning signs.

Andrew didn't want to see himself as a monster, so he created "Teddy Daniels", an anagram for Andrew Laeddis, to avoid the nightmarish truth.

Dr. Cawley is pleased to hear this, because his little LARP adventure was a last-ditch effort to reach Laeddis. In the two years since being admitted to Ashecliffe, "Teddy" became an exceptionally violent patient, rousing the ire of the hospital's warden, played by Ted Levine.

Quick sidebar: Ted Levine's warden has a conversation with "Teddy" late in the game, while driving around the island. In this sequence, he talks about violence. Not with "Teddy", but with Andrew. He doesn't mention any names, but he is clearly talking to Andrew Laeddis, and not his supplementary personality.

His brutal soliloquy is one of the highlights of the film. Ted Levine is only in three or four scenes in the film, and he only really speaks in this one. But he definitely makes the most of his screen time and creates a memorable and rather intimidating character with his very limited role.

I love Acting Sensation Mayor Ted Levine.

Anyway, Dr. Cawley explains that if his elaborate experiment didn't work, then the only option left to him would be to lobotomize Andrew, to curb his very violent tendencies.

The next morning, "Chuck" joins Andrew outside in the aftermath of the storm. He sits with Andrew on the stairs and gives him a cigarette. And he is disheartened to discover that Andrew has retreated back behind his "Teddy Daniels" persona, referring to his doctor as "Chuck", and talking once again about Dr. Cawley's medical conspiracy.

Orderlies approach them on the stairs, and Andrew sets off to greet them, turning to "Chuck" and telling him that it would be better to die a good man than live as a monster.

His doctor realizes that Andrew hasn't relapsed. He's not hiding behind the security blanket that is Teddy Daniels. He just can't live with the truth anymore, choosing to be lobotomized rather than deal with his tragic past.

It's a very sad ending, and I was surprised at how much it affected me.

Getting past the inane twist, I really enjoyed "Shutter Island". Everyone involved is at the top of their game with this film.

Scorsese's direction is superb. The entire cast is aces, from DiCaprio, Kingsley, Ruffalo, down to the supporting players like Max Von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams, Elias Koteas, Jackie Earle Hayley, and the great Ted Levine.

The cinematography is fantastic. Director of Photography Robert Richardson knows how to shoot a fucking movie, and he pulls out all the stops for this one. Our introduction to Shutter Island itself, and the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, is a beautiful sequence, thanks to Mr. Richardson's amazing talent behind the camera.

Approaching the hospital, it feels like the old building is a living breathing thing, ready to swallow up our protagonists. Great, great work. I hope that Robert Richardson's cinematography is nominated for an Oscar next year, but the Academy will surely forget about this brilliant work by the time the 83rd Annual Academy Awards roll around.

The music, chosen by music supervisor Robbie Robertson, is a perfect companion to the fantastic visual work. I didn't know until after I saw the film that there was no traditional score, but that Robertson hand picked all of the music used in the film from existing works. All of the music flowed together so well, I just assumed that there was a single composer behind it all.

Now I have to go buy the soundtrack.

The script follows the book's pulpy, second-grade plot very faithfully. Any other director would have taken this story and made an entertaining-yet-forgettable B Movie.

But Martin Scorsese took this second-grade story and made a thrilling and visually stunning movie about one man's fractured mind.

It's not Scorsese's best movie, but at 67 years old, the fact that he's still able to elevate material like "Shutter Island" is an astounding feat. I loved watching this movie.

If you're reading this, Dear Imaginary Reader, do yourself a favor and go see "Shutter Island".

I'm gonna go play with my 12-sided dice.