Saturday, February 20, 2010

The Wrong Pair of Crying Eyes

Shutter Island (2010)
directed by Martin Scorsese
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at the Vista

If Leonardo DiCaprio is the actor that late-career Scorsese deserves, he’s equally welcome to Massachusetts as his end-of-life New York. Boston, the pirates liked to say, was the Puritan backwater to New York City’s night life, and now that Mr. Mean Streets has retreated completely into the mists of his nostalgia, he can live like Leo’s G-Man, dreaming of Laura but directing Shutter Island. Nevermind Dennis Lehane’s second-rate story (watch the trailer and you’ve read it) or the inexcusable use of CGI. Forget about Mark Ruffalo lamely grimacing and the typecast glasses on old Death’s nose.

If it’s Michelle Williams who haunts DiCaprio’s nightmares, why is the only moment of sexual tension in the whole movie sparked by Emily Mortimer’s brief turn as a mother who killed her kids and misses, really misses, her man? The guards are wary of her; there are four men in the room. She shrinks from them at first, but wears red make-up on her lips and moves closer to the detective, his overcoat heavy in the salt sea air. The best movie cops would drown her children themselves just for a kiss at that moment, and there’s a beating heart in that scene that feels as warm beneath the palm as Out of the Past to me. But Scorsese lets it pass, as if this beauty in a thin patient’s shift is the bald witch from the beginning, cackling at the plants on the lawn.