Out on Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese's latest effort, Shutter Island, has people talking, mainly about the solution to the mystery introduced in the opening scenes, a solution some see coming while others don't, judging from conversations I've read online so far. I'd say the ending doesn't matter as much as the film itself but that the film itself isn't good enough to carry the weight of an ending that doesn't matter as much. And it's not because Scorsese does a bad job of directing, in fact, I'd say he does an excellent job. Robert Richardson does an superb job framing the shots Scorsese wants and Thelma Schoonmaker does her usual level best at editing it all together in a quickly paced but not frenetic fashion. The performances are solid as well with everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, as the two Federal Marshalls investigating the mystery, to Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow, as doctors at the island psychiatric hospital, turning in good, strong work. The problem, I think, is in the screenplay. There's simply too much of it.

Brevity, the old adage says, is the soul of wit. I would argue that, in a roundabout way, it's the soul of mystery too. It's not because if a mystery takes too long the audience starts looking for solutions, that's a part of the fun. It's because in a mystery there isn't much in the way of character development or story. Dramas have story, mysteries have plotting. A drama, like The Godfather, is about a character, Michael, and his story. It can go on for hours and multiple movies because the point isn't to figure out a solution, or have one revealed, but to delve deep into Michael's soul, or lack thereof. In a mystery, like Witness for the Prosecution, the point isn't to learn all about Sir Wilfred Robarts, but see if he can solve the mystery, or have it revealed to him. So if the plotting in a mystery, along with the requisite red herrings, goes on too long it starts to feel like just so much padding. The mistake of Shutter Island is that it thinks it's a drama instead of a mystery. I have even read reviews and comments in which it is stated that perhaps Scorsese didn't even care if the solution is let out of the bag early. If so then that lends support to my theory that this movie is mistaking what it is and what it's supposed to be.



Still, that confusion does not produce a bad movie. Visually striking and expertly paced it is, in fact, a very good movie. But for a mystery to examine character like a drama the mystery has to subvert itself to the character. Take Vertigo for example. It's a classic example of a drama that explores the psychological depths of its protagonist, John "Scotty" Ferguson as played by Jimmy Stewart, by involving him in a mystery. He is involved in the mystery by simply following a woman (Kim Novak) around and eventually starting up a relationship with her. The mystery is merely a way into Scotty's obsessions, which is the real subject at hand much like Close Encounters of the Third Kind is about Roy Neary's (Richard Dreyfuss) quest for meaning in his life and finding his place in the universe. That drama's "way in" is alien visitation. But Shutter Island has no such mission for its main character and thus, in continuing on and on with excessive plotting, starts to drain the life out of all the good things that are there. Let's use Vertigo once again to go at this from a different angle.

Imagine Vertigo starting at the point where Scotty has his nervous breakdown after the woman he was following falls to her death at the mission tower. Further imagine the movie runs for two and half hours from that point on as Scotty tries to solve the mystery of this new woman, Judy, who seems like a ghost from his past. And all of the buildup before the breakdown of knowing Scotty and who he is and his search for a connection to another wanderer? All of that, all of what came before, will simply be told in flashback at the end for five minutes. If you've seen Shutter Island that will make sense to you and if not, sorry for the confusion.



Martin Scorsese knows direction like geese know migration - it's in his blood, in his genes, it's who he is. There's never a point in Shutter Island where the viewer feels there is an unsteady hand at the helm and Scorsese draws us in quickly and efficiently. His skill continues to hold us there for quite some time but soon, even with all of his talent, we start to see the same trees, the same footprints, the same broken twigs and realize we're going in circles. From the opening shot of a ferry emerging from the mist there is a heavy sense of a story and characters moving relentlessly towards a doomed inevitability. By the end we're relieved that the doom has finally arrived but only in the abstract. Only because it has taken so long to get there with little in the way of anything about the characters developing into anything more than pieces of a puzzle. It wants to be a drama and a mystery and spends so much time trying to meld the two it ends up being neither. In the end, I half-heartedly recommend it but only for those interested in seeing the technical virtuosity of a now seasoned master of the cinema. Outside of that, I'd say you're better off staying on the mainland.

Opening Scenes I Love:Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

And now for the second in the series, Opening Credits I Love. For this edition we have Martin Scorsese's 1974 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, not a film most people think of when they think of Scorsese but another great entry nonetheless in his stunning succession of films that started with Mean Streets in 1973 and ran through King of Comedy in 1983. Watching it again this week I realized that so many Scorsese films have superb opening title sequences. Think about the cab moving through the smoke and steam rising up from hell at the beginning of Taxi Driver or the beautiful image of Jake LaMotta, alone in the ring, shadow-boxing, in the opening of Raging Bull. Whatever you may think of the movies, and I think highly of them, those opening title sequences are marvelous. But here, in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, we have my favorite of all Scorsese's openings.

It begins in Academy aspect ratio rather than widescreen as the music and blue satin background emulate the starry-eyed showbiz tales of old. After the titles themselves comes Scorsese's version of Dorothy's Kansas, except it's in color with a Gone With the Wind tinted red sky throughout. Alice as a child strolls along the landscape singing and despite the lack of appreciation she feels she gets, she knows she will be a star. Only little Alice's language betrays the rustic nostalgia on display, purposefully, and helps jolt the viewer forward in time to the present where, aided by Mott the Hoople's All the Way from Memphis and a sweeping crane shot (GWTW again?) that beautifully makes majestic the ordinary, we find the grown-up Alice at a sewing machine (Singer?), presumably having never succeeded in becoming a big-time entertainer. It's a fantastic introduction to the character and the story and it's one of my favorite opening credit sequences. Enjoy.



At Unexplained Cinema, the dark side of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

And they had Jazzercise!

Were the eighties the worst decade for movies in... decades? The twenties saw the silents reach their apex, the thirties bore the fruits of a perfected studio system that ran well into the early fifties while the fifties themselves began to see Hollywood facing increasing competition from abroad until the sixties, which saw such an amazing output of quality work from Europe and Asia that it put the words "foreign film" in the vocabulary of even non-cinephiles which led right into the seventies which saw a Renaissance in American film.

And then came the eighties.

Nobody talks about the eighties. According to legend or myth, something is supposed to have happened that turned the eighties movies to mush. That something is usually some combination of Star Wars, an improved economy, yuppies, Ronald Reagan, the Moral Majority, Clara Peller, Walter Mondale, Jheri curl, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, MTV, Pac-Man and Jazzercise. Definitely Jazzercise.

So anyway, somehow, the theory goes, all these factors led to filmmakers deciding in unison that they would no longer make great movies. It didn't matter if the filmmaker in question was a great one, because of one or all of the factors above, their art would suffer regardless. And how can it not be true? So many cinephiles say it's true it has to be, right? I mean, so many people say it, people like... um... well, okay, people like me. If you're looking for one of the all time "eighties movies suck" offenders look no further than this blog. I've spouted this cinephile party line for years to the point where it's damn-near a mantra. But is it true? That's up to you I suppose since decreeing a decades worth of artistic output to be either "good" or "bad" is so completely cemented in the land of subjectivity that I couldn't possibly provide the right answer for anyone. For me, however, I can only ask another question: How can the arbitrary cordoning off of years into decades possibly affect the quality work of separate individual artists making films within that given period of time? To answer my question I went to movie sites like IMDB and Netflix and put together a list from a randomly chosen year, 1983. This list contains 30 movies that could reasonably be ranked in someone's top ten at the end of the year. Not mine necessarily (I can't even stomach some of these titles) but someone's list. Here it is:

Betrayal
Danton
El Norte
Fanny and Alexander
Local Hero
Return of the Jedi
Risky Business
Say Amen, Somebody
Scarface
Silkwood
Star 80
Terms of Endearment
Testament
Draughtsman's Contract
The Dresser
The Right Stuff
The Year of Living Dangerously
WarGames
Angelo My Love
Frances
Gorky Park
Rumble Fish
Th Dead Zone
The Grey Fox
Trading Places
Under Fire
Yentl
Christmas Story
Koyaanisqatsi
King of Comedy

That's a pretty good top thirty. The last one on the list is purposeful placement because that's probably the one I would give the top award too although Tender Mercies, Local Hero, The Right Stuff, The Draughtsman's Contract (released in the States in 1983 but made in 1982) and Fanny and Alexander could easily take it as well. So what's the problem with the eighties? If you go through the other years of that decade you can, as I found, compile similar lists. So is it the bad movies of the eighties? Is that the problem? Is it Porkys, Baby... The Secret of the Lost Legend, Stroker Ace and all those Police Academy movies? Maybe that's it. Maybe it's because the Stallone/Norris/Schwarzenegger action movies started in the eighties and people associate that kind of mindless violence with the total film output of that decade. Or maybe directors like Ron Howard started making movies that felt too slick, too assembly line. Oh no, wait, I mean MTV started making videos that produced directors who then made movies that were too slick. No, no wait, now I remember, it was Robert Zemeckis. It was his fault.

Ah hell, if you try, you can probably use anything as proof that the movies of the eighties sucked. The only thing you can't use as proof are the movies themselves. The second you start listing the bad stuff anyone else can start listing the bad stuff from any other decade to counter it. Which means you're left with the good stuff, and the good stuff from the eighties can hold its own with the good stuff from just about any other decade because let's face it, directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese and David Lynch didn't exactly slouch off during that decade.

The fact is, the movies of the eighties aren't nearly as bad as they've been made out to be, or at least not as bad as I've made them out to be. As I revisit several and look forward to revisiting several more in the coming months I realize it was a pretty good decade for movies after all. So let's cut the eighties some slack, huh? They had their share of dreck but they also had, as evidenced by 1983 alone, some pretty solid fare as well. Where's the beef? It's in the movies, the good ones, and as it turns out, there were quite a few in that decade. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out my Rubik's Cube before my Jazzercise class begins.

Storyboarding Taxi Driver

From Scorsese on Scorsese by Martin Scorsese (edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie, London: Faber and Faber, 1989.).

"Travis really has the best of intentions; he believes he's doing right, just like St Paul. He wants to clean up life, clean up the mind, clean up the soul. He is very spiritual, but in a sense Charles Manson was spiritual, which doesn't mean that it's good. It's the power of the spirit on the wrong road. The key to the picture is the idea of being brave enough to admit having these feelings, and then act them out. I instinctively showed that the acting out was not the way to go, and this created even more ironic twists to what was going on. " p 62.

Below are the original storyboards for the shootout at the brothel as drawn by Martin Scorsese (pages 55-59). On the whole, the finished film follows them very closely with only minor changes as noted. I have highlighted one frame from each storyboard to compare with the corresponding shot in the completed film.

Upon hearing the gunfire Iris appears to be lifting only her head from the bed in the storyboard but in the film she sits up completely.

The shooter's gun is about two feet from Bickle's arm in the storyboard and his torso completely within the frame. In the film, he shoots from point blank range and only his arm is visible. When Travis fires back it appears in the storyboard that Scorsese planned to have his victim shot in the eye(?) but it's difficult to tell. He is shot in the forehead in the film.

Two reverses from the storyboard: In the first shot, Iris is on the left side of the room but in the storyboard she is on the right. In the second, Bickle puts his "gun" to his head with his left hand in the film, his right hand on the storyboard.

Scorsese does not elaborate in the book on the reason for any minor changes. Minor changes from storyboard to completed film occur regularly during the shooting process and many directors have been known to draw up a new storyboard during the shooting. Most of these changes probably occurred from necessity more than anything else. For instance, in the story board Scorsese has the shooter with glasses shot in the eye. Perhaps that is why he gave him glasses, to conceal the squib that would go off but it proved more difficult than thought so his forehead was used instead. When Bickle sits on the sofa in the film his right arm is bunched up against the corpse of one of his victims and so going with his left hand was probably just easier. And yet it created an iconic image: I cannot imagine Bickle's right hand at his head, it has to be the left.

Scorsese's storyboards confirm the importance of the director to the visual result of the film. True, a good cinematographer must still set up the shot, properly light it and make it work. But a good director has already shot the movie in his head and on paper before the camera ever rolls. Think of Orson Welles two masterpieces Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. They each had a different cinematographer (Gregg Tolland on Kane and Stanley Cortez on Ambersons) and yet have remarkable visual similarities as well as visual flourishes not found in other Tolland or Cortez shot films. However, a director can have all the visual ideas in the world and without the right cinematographer those ideas may end up unrealized. Tolland and Cortez were brilliant cinematographers and had the talent to give Welles what he wanted. Just as Scorsese had Michael Chapman (Invasion of the Body Snatchers 78 and Raging Bull 80) help him create one of the most stunning climaxes to any film of the seventies. It was a final brutal entry into the world of Travis Bickle but without Scorsese's storyboards and Michael Chapman's camera work, it might have been just another shootout.

And the Oscar Goes to ...

... something you did in another year. Cinema Styles presents Great moments in Oscar Compensation History.

Leading up to the Oscars I'll continue to highlight snubs and other odd behavior. This new feature focuses on the best (or worst) of the "mercy" Oscars, as they're known. These are Oscars given as compensation for a flub in a previous year. We'll start it off with an actress, an actor and a director.

BEST ACTRESS: Bette Davis Dangerous 1935 - for her un-nominated performance in Of Human Bondage 1934. This is considered by many to be the first true Oscar compensation award. It was only the eighth year of the awards and already they were screwing up royally. In 1934 Bette Davis received praise for her blazing performance in Of Human Bondage. Whether the accent was perfect or not, who cares? She was easily the most memorable thing on the screen for the entire year and it made her a star. But the Academy didn't nominate her and movie fans around the country cried foul. So the Academy allowed for a write-in-vote among members for the first time so that Davis could still win, possibly. She didn't. The award went to Claudette Colbert (a personal favorite of mine) in It Happened One Night and you can't really complain about that. In 1935 Davis made Dangerous, giving a listless performance in a mediocre film. Nobody cared. They gave her the Oscar for it, but everyone knew why she had really won it.

BEST ACTOR: James Stewart The Philadelphia Story (1940) - for his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). His performance in The Philadelphia Story is terrific but here's the story from days gone by: In 1938 Robert Donat lost to Spencer Tracy who won his second consecutive Oscar, this time for Boys Town. According to Oscar lore there were some feelings that the Academy was all about rewarding American movies (which it is) and no others. Other Brits had won (Charles Laughton The Private Lives of Henry VII 1933) but many felt Donat's performance in The Citadel was better than Tracy's in Boys Town. So in 1939, Donat received the award for his performance in Goodbye Mr. Chips. That meant Clark Gable had to lose for Gone With the Wind but that was okay because he already had an Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934). That left Jimmy Stewart, of whom many felt gave the best performance of the year in Mr. Smith. Which takes us to 1940 and The Philadelphia Story. Did you get all that?

BEST DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese The Departed (2006) - for a career of previous achievement (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, After Hours, Raging Bull, goodfellas). This is too recent to have any significant lore attached to it but if most filmgoers check their gut instincts there's no denying he didn't deserve it for this movie. The film moves fast and weaves a complicated tale but (for me at least) when it's over, it's gone. It leaves the head and doesn't come back. It was yet another film from last year (like Little Miss Sunshine) that received kudos and attention far outweighing it's status as a somewhat sterile empty crime thriller. But the kudos and awards inflated the expectations and inevitably those expectations were not met. This was not the best film of the year and certainly not Scorsese's best work, but it feels like a Scorsese film (unlike say, The Aviator) and they had to FINALLY give it to him for something.