Author Dennis Lehane has written over a dozen novels ever since his debut novel A Drink Before the War hit bookshelves in 1994. That novel followed two budding detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, who navigated the oftentimes rough and dangerous working class neighbourhood of Dorchester, the exact place in Boston that Lehane himself grew up in. He then turned that novel into a series of six books, each following Kenzie & Gennaro as they got deeper and deeper into the underground world of Boston. In between, he wrote several other standalone novels, one of which was the highly-acclaimed Shutter Island, released in the spring of 2003.
Shutter Island follows U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels as he travels by boat to Shutter Island, a small island that houses an insane asylum. Teddy, along with his partner Chuck, are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates, a woman who was accused of drowning her three children in a lake. The mystery lies in the fact that she was locked up in a cell with seemingly no way to escape, not to mention that the rough, rocky waters surrounding the island would certainly make for a fatal escape. As we learn more about Teddy’s backstory, the circumstances begin to get stranger and stranger as we meet more of the patients and are introduced to Dr. Cawley, the man in charge of running the asylum.
“Which would be worse — to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?”
Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island
A big part of the intrigue in this story is that we’re never quite sure what’s going on. Told in a third person narrative and set in 1954–and therefore free from all of the modern technology of the present–it’s never quite clear that who we are meeting are the people they say they are. Take, for instance, a scene in which Teddy climbs down the side of a rock cliff where he discovers a hidden cave. Quick to get inside to find refuge from the raging hurricane that is ripping across the island, Teddy meets a woman who says she was a former psychiatrist at the hospital and who claims that when she discovered some of the less than savory experiments that were being conducted there, was locked up herself. Later, when Teddy tries telling this to others, no one believes him and he is left wondering whom he can trust.
As a big fan of Lehane’s writing, I am always left in awe as to how he is able to spin such original and interesting yarns while simultaneously making them familiar by pulling from certain conventions of the genre. Red herrings and misdirection are rife here, and Lehane knows all too well how to lead the reader one way while something is going on in another direction. The strength of the novel is in Lehane’s ability to keep the plot moving forward while also causing more questions to pop up in the reader’s mind.
One thing I especially liked about this story was that he set it in the 1950s with the backdrop of World War II present throughout the story. We are shown images of liberation camps in Dachau where Teddy supposedly killed a bunch of guards in trying to free some of the POWs. This gives the story much more weight and allows the reader to try and understand some of Teddy’s actions and paints a clearer picture of his involvement as a U.S. Marshal. This book is a page-turner from start to finish and immediately jumps into the story with the opening chapter beginning as Teddy is disembarking from the ferry boat that brought him to Shutter Island.
In 2010, master film director Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, The Departed, Goodfellas) made a feature-length film out of Lehane’s best-selling novel. The film stars highly popular actor Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, Django Unchained) as the Daniels character along with Mark Ruffalo (The Kids are All Right, Zodiac), Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Sexy Beast), and Emily Mortimer (Harry Brown, Hugo), among others, in supporting roles. One of the highest-grossing films of Scorsese’s long and storied career, the movie was popular with audiences and critics generally gave it favourable reviews.
One of the biggest reasons for its success and why people loved it so much was because of DiCaprio’s outstanding performance as U.S. Marshal Daniels. Having come a long way since drowning off the sinking Titanic, DiCaprio injects an emotionally complex side to the character while creating a believable albeit highly confused protagonist. Although this is a role that I could see many actors chewing up, Scorsese and Dicaprio having a working symbiosis that few director-actor combinations are able to achieve and on such a consistent and prolific basis (the pair have made five feature-length movies to date, the others being: Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street). Scorsese’s biggest strengths are choosing material that is interesting and casting the right actors in the main roles, whether it’s long-time collaborators Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel or DiCaprio himself. Scorsese has a unique style to film-making that is both recognizable and fresh, and often violent yet beautiful, a rare meshing of approaches.
“No one’ll talk. It’s like they’re scared of something.”
Dennis Lehane, Shutter ISland
Two other things I loved about this film were its pacing and its cinematography. While Scorsese has made his fair share of films with long running times (The Wolf of Wall Street totaled 180 minutes while his recent hit, The Irishman, clocked in at 209 minutes), at 138 minutes, this film seemed to fly by, and this is largely due to the efficiency of its pace. Scorsese is generally good at minimizing unnecessary exposition in this film while giving the viewer plenty of suspense and ‘what the heck is going on’ moments. Having made so many films, he knows how not to waste the viewers time making him one of the most reliable filmmakers in Hollywood. The cinematography is also top-notch, with plenty of interesting camera angles and low lighting to help aid in setting the mysterious and dramatic tone of the film. This is definitely a constant throughout Scorsese’s work, as he often employs great cinematic techniques to help tell the story, such as freeze frames, unconventional camera angles, and narration. Consider this quote, which sums up one of Scorsese’s working philosophies when it comes to film-making: “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” This couldn’t be truer with Shutter Island where deception and mystery are the guiding principles of the story.
When choosing between which medium I think represents the story best, this is definitely a tough choice to make. Lehane is one of my very favourite authors and having read nearly all of his books, he rarely disappoints. Being a standalone novel also makes it somewhat unique within his canon of fiction as nine of his novels belong to one of two series. On the other hand, Scorsese and DiCaprio make for such an amazing tandem and both rarely attach themselves to dull material. Having made around thirty feature-length dramatic films in his career, Scorsese, it’s safe to say, is one of cinema’s all-time greats who’s had very few misses and who film-goers know is going to give them something to talk about around the water cooler. Because of this, I’m going to have to go with Scorsese’s psychological thriller as my pick between the two. The film is able to create a thrilling, memorable atmosphere that really showcases the mystery and intrigue of the story. Scorsese and company took Lehane’s source novel and elevated it into something even more exciting, which amounts to an unforgettable cinematic experience.
Final verdict: the movie.
To pick up a copy of Lehane’s magnificent 2003 novel, click here. And don’t forget to take a look at the trailer for Scorsese’s 2010 film below.
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