Shutter Island (2010, dir. Martin Scorcese)

Maybe it’s timely to write about this so many months later in the wake of the Lost finale.  I didn’t watch that show, but I of course read the recaps, and it feeds into the major problem that so many storytellers have now.  It’s hard to stay ahead of audiences now, it seems, because we’re not given enough of a reason to suspend disbelief.  Instead, we usually sit on the outside and pick apart each action.  Like watching a Shyamalan film: it’s not the movie that matters, but how quickly you can guess the twist.  Thankfully, he’s moving on to The Last Airbender, because there’s only so many acceptable almost-super-natural reasons you can go through before the well runs completely dry.

It’s sad to see Scorcese, a rock that’s been sinking, fall prey to the need to try to twist us apart.  What’s even sadder is to see audiences accept incoherence as elevated storytelling.  It’s not.  In the end, I think Martin might see that, too.  Which is why the ending is actually so straightforward, so anticlimactic.  But he’s no Cronenberg.  Instead of making a B-list movie that somehow ends up being more, he makes an A-list event that makes you wonder what the point of the whole thing was.

I will say this, though: the question of which “cure” is better at the end is definitely a chilly one.