{"id":1009,"date":"2010-02-05T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T20:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/02\/martin-scorsese-vs-shutter-island.html"},"modified":"2010-02-05T12:51:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T20:51:00","slug":"martin-scorsese-vs-shutter-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/02\/martin-scorsese-vs-shutter-island.html","title":{"rendered":"Martin Scorsese vs. "Shutter Island""},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS winter in LA it has been raining, as we used to say in high school, like a mofo, and every times the heavens open I think of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island<\/i>. The film, which opens on Friday the 19th, is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane that is so gripping, so full of twists and turns, that it almost ruined a vacation last summer since I kept retreating to the basement to read it. (Much of the film takes place in pouring rain and driving winds, as this isle in Boston Harbor is hit with a hurricane.)<\/p>\n

So it was a rare pleasure to see that the director was able to adapt the novel faithfully AND to turn out a kickass film that is also a showcase of great acting — Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow in addition to a strong Leo DiCaprio in a complicated role.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a> is my piece from Sunday’s LA Times, which comes mostly from an interview I did out here with Scorsese and conversations with Lehane and DiCaprio. Meeting the director was a real thrill, it was fun to go down tangents about his own work — long conversation about The Last Waltz<\/i>, which weirdly was the first of his films I ever saw — as well as subjects like film noir and the work of Samuel Fuller.<\/p>\n

The film is in some ways a departure for the director, and it may be too grounded in genre for his following and not gory enough for the horror-movie fans that are the film’s natural audience. (And its move to the dead of February will not be good for the box office or Oscar noms.)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Scorsese comes, famously, from the first generation of American directors to attend film school en masse, and even in that company he stands out for his commitment to film history.\u00a0Here<\/a> is a sidebar about the films he shows his cast and crew so they have a common vocabulary of film references. “We would watch one or two movies,” DiCaprio told me, “just to capture the tone of a specific scene.”<\/p>\n

“I’m not very good on plot,” Scorsese told me. “I prefer character and mood, and atmosphere and music.”<\/p>\n

As for the plot of the novel and film, the less said the better. But see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS winter in LA it has been raining, as we used to say in high school, like a mofo, and every times the heavens open I think of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island. The film, which opens on Friday the 19th, is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane that is so gripping, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,326,325,134,324,164],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-film","7":"category-lehane","8":"category-leo-dicaprio","9":"category-noir","10":"category-samuel-fuller","11":"category-scorsese","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}