DVD Review: The Departed

 

Another film from the back end of the 1001 Films guilt list. I’m not sure what I make of Martin Scorsese as a director. As a visual storyteller, the man is one of the masters. His trademark visual style, smooth shots and quick editing (courtesy of his “only works for Scorsese” editor, Thelma Schoonmaker) are amazing. A story that could take four hours to tell whips past in 2 ½, with barely a chance to breathe.

But it’s not just all camerawork and editing – the performance he elicits from his stars are nothing less than full intensity – no matter who is on screen, you can’t take your eyes off them.

But then, by the same token, the man seems drawn to telling stories of brutal, violent people. I can only ask: Why? I’m not sure. His gangster characters in Goodfellas and Casino are some of the most vicious characters ever brought to screen. Don’t even get me started on boxer, Jake LaMotta, from Raging Bull – a horrible, violent, wife-bashing man. Why all these types of characters? (In his favour, it should be mentioned that Scorsese also occasionally makes other types of stories as well. The respectfully Buddhist style of Kundun, about the Dalai Lama, for instance, or The Aviator, the most blatantly pro-capitalist film released in the last few years.)

Which brings us to The Departed, probably his best film in recent years, a complex and gripping suspense thriller set amongst the Irish-American gangsters of Boston, Massachusetts. It tells the story of two young men who join the police force at the same time – Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), sent to join the police by gangster, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), to be a “mole” in the police force, informing Costello of what is going on; and Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who joins the police force to escape his sordid family tress only to be promptly sent back out by the police force to infiltrate Costello’s gang as a criminal and inform them what is going on.

The suspense of this film is in watching how quickly things start spinning out of control and how close both Sullivan and Costigan come to being caught by their respective employers – and once Sullivan discovers that a mole exists in Costello’s gang and Costigan discovers that there’s a mole in the police force, the tension really ratchets up.

You certainly won’t be bored, but Scorsese is continually pushing the language and violence boundaries of this type of film, so I would warn away those easily offended. The way all the loose ends are tied up felt very Asian to me, which is no surprise, considering that the film is a remake of Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs, which I have still yet to see. I don’t want to give too much away, but it possibly doesn’t end the way you expect it to.

In the end, I love the craftsmanship of this story and the acting is top-notch (especially Leonardo DiCaprio, who steals the show as the tortured Costigan – who joined the police to escape his past and now finds himself in the thick of the criminal word – committing acts he never hoped to have to do). But I’m not sure this is the type of story I could watch over and over again.

4 out of 5.

Film Review: Shutter Island

I must admit, I’ve always thought that it must be somewhat demoralising to film directors to make a mystery thriller. You spend all this effort honing a cinematic experience that, for the most part, can really only work once. After your audience has seen it, they know the solution to the riddle, how everything pans out and there’s not necessarily a lot of reason to see it again.

So the strength of these types of films generally hangs on a) the subject matter, b) how well you can baffle the audience and c) and  how well they’re executed. Shutter Island delivers in varying levels on these three counts. But that might depend on who you are as well.

In terms of subject matter, it’s a great idea for a story. A US Marshall, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo diCaprio) heads out to Shutter Island off the coast of Massachusetts, home of an aslyum for the most violent of the criminally insane. Teddy is a bit traumatised himself, his wife having perished in a fire in their apartment, but really his trauma is about to begin.

Aided by his new Marshall sidekick (Mark Ruffalo), Teddy gets his briefing from the Director of the asylum (Ben Kingsley): an inmate has disappeared – a woman who is in denial that she drowned her three children. Teddy and sidekick set off to investigate, and the mystery begins.

From here, how the story goes depends on how baffled you are. From the moment I saw the trailer, I had a theory about how this kind of movie would turn out (a theory which I will not share…) and it was obvious fairly quickly that this was the direction the movie was heading down. I was wrong about a couple of details, but it was more an ending that ticked boxes for me, rather than left me reeling with surprise when the end credits rolled (unlike, say, The Usual Suspects, where I was). However, that’s just me. I know other people who had no idea how it was all going to pan out and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. So I won’t mention any more except to say that the less you think about it as you watch it, the more you’ll get out of it.

Which brings us to the execution. If you’ve ever seen a film by Martin Scorsese, you’ll know that the guy is one of our greatest filmic storytellers alive today. His subject matter is often violent and extreme, but always visually engaging. His editor, Thelma Schoonmaker (who I assume works almost exclusively for Scorsese) has developed a rapid-fire editing style over the years that makes his films instantly recognisable.

However, I’m not sure whether it’s Thelma or Martin, but somebody seems to be losing their touch in the editing room. Normally, his films move at an exhausting pace, with very little fat. But this film could easily have trimmed 20 minutes of it’s 140 minutes with no trouble at all. I understand that it’s the modern thing to have a dream sequence followed by a dream sequence. (It certainly made me jump in The Wolfman.) But Wolfman pulled off two dream sequences in about 45 seconds. Shutter Island has three back to back and it feels like they go for 10 minutes.

But despite all this, the film gradually manages to work itself up to a crescendo, without getting irritating. While it does have a few jump moments, often it shocks the audience by turning the sound all the way down. (Watch the scene near the beginning where the old woman says “Shhh” – it’s seriously creepy.) The separate strands of the woman who drowned her children, the Dachau concentration camp and the death of Teddy’s wife, all blend to provide a genuinely disturbing finale that, despite its predictability, is still rattling around in my head the next day.

Finally, a word must be said about the music. Rather than bring in a film composer, Robbie Robertson (of The Band fame, for those who remember The Last Waltz) is the Music Supervisor, and he has assembled an extensive collection of 20th/21st century classical music to use in the film. So there’s everything from Penderecki to Adams to Eno on display here and it works amazingly. (Especially the strident piece of Penderecki as Teddy arrives on the island and is driven to the asylum gates.) I once heard someone say that modern classical music was like music from a slasher film that goes on for 20 minutes. And that is kind of backed up by this film score, which will get under your skin faster than anything else in the film.

For those who like this sort of thing and have no idea where it’s going – you’re going to love this film. For the rest of you, there’s a lot to appreciate about the filmmaking, even if it is a tad slow. Just pretend you’re watching a Hitchcock instead…

4 out of 5.