Shutter Your Face

I saw Shutter Island at last on Thursday night, through a funk of sickness. It is a good movie - good, but not great. Where it succeeds is in its visuals, texture, and performances. I have not seen Scorsese and DiCaprio's other projects, but on the basis of this they seem like a strong pair, and I'm now inclined to check out both Gangs of New York and the Departed.

DiCaprio makes the film, and, I think it is fair to say, in places he carries it. It's been a good year for him, and though Island is nothing like as good a film as Inception, DiCaprio's performance is actually better. Nolan's film did not offer him the time to decompress the character as he does here. Indeed, to an extent Teddy's character may be the point of the film.

It's odd the DiCaprio would choose to make this movie back to back with Inception, so similar are the roles. I am given to assume that he has a particular penchant for these characters who are in some way disconnected from reality, as was also a facet of Abagnale and Hughes. To be sure, he's good at playing them.

Ben Kingsley is also superb as the doctor who does not judge his criminally insane patients, and whose caring is shown through a very firm hand. At times he has to be the villain, at times to suggest a sinister edge, but at other times he needs to show a genuine caring. A tricky line, but one he walks well.

Mark Ruffalo adds the final element as DiCaprio's partner, Chuck. It's the sort of performance that will probably be overlooked, as it never steals any scenes from the other two, but it's a strong and credible showing which provides a solid third column for the piece.

It's the plot that prevents greatness being achieved. I can imagine that in novel form it may have been a stronger affair, but as presented on the screen, it's flawed. For one thing, the film is immensely predictable. Within the first five minutes, most of the audience will know exactly where the next two hours are going. Yet it maintains a sort of half-hearted pretense of playing with the audience, and at the end of the time you wonder whether you were ever meant to be decieved. The red herring plot threads - clearly evident as such even as they play out - seem to lack a point. In fact, events are so predictable, that I wonder if this was actually Scorsese's destination, or whether his actual goal was not the 'reveal', but that final line shared between Teddy and Chuck. Without that scene, the film would feel rather empty, but with it, it retroactively reinvests the film with some meaning, and a rewatch, treating the film as a study of Teddy, with the outcome in mind, and focussing on the way in which he interacts with and judges the other patients, may disclose some of the obfusticated point of the earlier scenes. If nothing else, it is in that final scene that the performances hit their highest notes.

So, anyway, like I said, good, but not great. Worth seeing once, at least, and maybe twice, particularly for the feel of the thing and for DiCaprio. 8/10

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Also watched Magnolia, which I have had kicking about the place on DVD for years now. It's hard to find a time when I feel like sparing 3.5 hours, you know? Anyway, having settled to watch it the other night, lights off in the settling twilight, I was initially enjoying it a great deal. It certainly has a brilliant opening. Paul Thomas Anderson claims to have structured the film after the Beatles' track A Day in the Life, with its swelling peaks and crescendos which build, then ebb, then build again. I can certainly see the similarity. My problem with it is that it feels like one swell too man. It's being asked to emotionally invest one too many times, so by the end I felt a little bit of apathy. Certainly for the first 1:45 of its running time it keeps things pacy, lively, and changed up enough to be exhilirating. I quote '1:45' because that's the point when the film reached its midpoint crescendo and I was enjoying it so much I checked to make sure it wasn't going to be ending soon. Well, it wasn't, but shortly after this point it descends into its deepest trough - not in terms of quality, but in terms of emotion - and it doesn't quite sustain enough flourishes of pace and style to maintain the entertainment level as it coasts through. It's a pretty bleak film, and it gets a bit bogged down on the way into that final act.

In many respects it's akin to Benjamin Button, being long and sweeping in grandeur, and attempting a meditation on life through a considerable fixation on death, as well as love. But where that film was mawkish and tawdry, Magnolia succeeds, perhaps because it is inherently more vibrant to follow a tapestry of characters for a day than to follow one for a lifetime. But also generally, Magnolia simply creates more compelling, sympathetic characters than Button with its overly idiosyncratic weirdos. In particular Tom Cruise actually bothers to do some acting as a sort of heightened version of himself, and Julianne Moore provides the strongest showing as a messed up woman breaking down as her husband dies. There really isn't a weak link in the cast, though, and it'd be ephemeral of me to name everyone in turn. I'll give one final named credit to Philip Seymour Hoffman, though, who is excellent, like he generally is (also, I recommed seeing Capote).

All that, and it has Supertramp on the soundtrack, so you know it can't be bad (Although at present I have Aimee Mann's opening rendition of One is the Loneliest Number stuck in my head). 8/10, again.