INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE
The Crazies
**
Shutter Island
****
Dual Review by Joel Frost
Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you, the saying goes. “The Crazies”, Breck Eisner’s remake of the 1973 George Romero film of the same name, shows a world built on the foundation of this axiom. The “Government” of Romero’s vision is a shadowy extension of our regular fears, likely to lose control of the terrible forces it is attempting to harness in the name of the supposed greater good, to the detriment of us regular folk. There are real examples of such things, from the small-pox on blankets that the Government gave to Native Americans, to the Three Mile Island disaster, and many others in-between. Paranoia, insight, delusion, and various forms of logic (faulty and well-founded) about real and imagined events have informed a fantastic fringe cultural history that is populated by aliens, assassins, secret government agencies and agents, and of course, zombies. The homicidal brain-washed victim of the Government’s tampering is the perfect villainous embodiment of these fears, because the zombie is one of us. He’s our neighbor. Or maybe, if we don’t watch it, he’s ourself.
After all, the Government did produce a kind of zombie, with some regularity, in asylums in this country around mid-century. A lobotomy, a removal or simple scrambling of the frontal lobe of any of us, could easily make us drooling hulks. We’d probably not want to eat each other’s brains, but since few of us spend much time around the lobotomized, it’s hard to say.
“The Crazies” concerns a small town in Iowa, Ogden Marsh, with its cornfields and farms and baseball, that is the unfortunate accidental recipient of a Government-engineered virus. The bug gets in the water supply, and before they know what hit ‘em, most everyone in the town has been turned into a murderous maniac. The early parts of the film, as the first people are infected and commence waving around shotguns, knives and gas cans… killing their loved ones and strangers indiscriminately… is the most compelling section. The town Sheriff, Timothy Olyphant, tries to make sense of what’s going on. People are acting crazy, all right, but can it be explained? The shotgun-wielder at the baseball game used to be a drunk, after all. He must have fallen off the wagon. The ambiguity of motive and drive is the more interesting story than what the Sheriff and his deputy soon discover… The Government is behind it all.
The tension breaks at this point, or at least changes. Sure, there are still some nasty folks to deal with, but with the real villain defined so clearly, the film loses a bit of traction. There are flashes of the original tension… there is a short period of suspense over whether the Sheriff’s deputy has been infected or is just acting crazy… but the script doesn’t really tackle the kind of crazies that can, and likely would, infect “sane” people if they were running from an army of homicidal maniacs, all the while not sure if they or anyone they were next to was likely to turn into one of those undead. That’s the kind of fear that could drive someone to inhuman lengths, whether that person had indeed been robbed of his or her humanity by the Government or not. “The Crazies”, for all its suspense… and there is plenty of that… just doesn’t want to get involved with the nuts and bolts of real fear, real paranoia, real danger. It’s got all the elements of the genre… indeed, the original film practically set the rules for the genre… so it functions as a manifestation of basic human paranoia, rather than an investigation into the nature of insanity. The scapegoat is the Government, infecting wholesome innocent people with homicidal madness… something that just wouldn’t occur without intervention from outside sources, the film seems to say. It’s a simplified vision, and even Breck Eisner’s capable if not derivative directing style and the best efforts of a fairly respectable ensemble can’t dress this film up beyond what it is… a decent re-tread of a movie that provides a skewed kind of comfort: If something goes wrong, blame it on the Government.
“Shutter Island”, Martin Scorsese’s latest masterpiece, makes no such mistakes. Unlike “The Crazies”, “Shutter Island” is not confined by what has come before, or by what is expected of genre films. “Shutter Island” cleverly side-steps genre-definitions at every turn of the script, all the while dancing with various recognizable styles and forms. It is in that dance that Martin Scorsese creates a brilliant film that perfectly supports the excellent script.
In the first few minutes of “Shutter Island”, we see the island itself, looming through a parting fog. It’s a vision out of classic films of the early century… we may expect to find King Kong traipsing about on an island like that. Certainly, some kind of monster must inhabit it.
What is discovered on the island is a kind of insanity that a film like “The Crazies” doesn’t bother delving into. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a Federal Marshall who is investigating a recent disappearance on the island. One of the inmates, it seems, has escaped. The mystery unfolds and thickens all at the same time, as Daniels attempts to get to the bottom of things. The woman has escaped, or perhaps just vanished into thin air. Odd, it is, and Teddy Daniels is nothing if not suspicious. Some might say paranoid.
Daniels, we discover through flashbacks, was one of the first soldiers to come upon Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp, at the end of World War 2. He is clearly traumatized, and it seems as though his experiences during the war, and particularly at Dachau, are to blame. A flashback scene shows him standing over a bleeding, dying Nazi, who had flubbed an attempt to kill himself. Daniels sees the Nazi lamely trying to reach for the gun that is just out of his reach on the floor next to him, and Daniels moves it away from the dying man with his foot. It’s a simple, quick choice. Perhaps it’s the right one, by some definition. It is, however, no less violent than any other murder. Whose fault it is isn’t the point… the Nazi surely brought the situation on himself… the damage is what’s in focus. Daniels is an innocent everyman, drawn into a savage situation, perpetrated by the clearest real-life example of the kind of Government conspiracy that a film like “The Crazies” imagines. He is collateral damage to the sort of callous barbarism that man can act upon himself. The Nazi bleeds and dies and Daniels allows it to happen, and he is scarred because of it, of course. It’s that kind of weight and damage that a lesser film, a lesser script, a lesser director could easily pass over in the supposed interest of suspense, revenge, style and just plain fun. Quentin Tarantino’s much lesser Nazi film, “Inglorious Basterds”, is laid wide open and bare by not even the whole of “Shutter Island”, but only just this section.
In fact, by making a film like this, that takes into account these levels of fear and real human cost, Martin Scorsese (with a script by Laeta Kalogridis, adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane) has served notice that he has only matured and grown as a director and social critic. His whole career, it could be argued, has centered around examining the consequences of violence. Martin Scorsese is interested in showing us who we are, or who we might be… without any Government to blame.
There are many riveting scenes in “Shutter Island”. Indeed, there are perhaps none that are not riveting. One in particular stands out as the real hinge of the film, and maybe of Scorsese’s vision overall. Daniels, while wandering around the island, is picked up and given a ride by the Warden (Ted Levine… Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs”). The two engage in a discussion on the nature of violence, with the Warden starting the conversation. He explains the nature of man as it is married to violence… the Zen of the brutal imprisoner. He describes the cage that the two men are in… that they would both love to destroy the other, if given the chance. Sane violence versus the violence of insanity. It’s a brilliant and terrifying scene… one of the best in a great director’s long career.
“Shutter Island” was released at a strange time of the year. It has apparently been ready for release for over a year. Perhaps some thought it would not receive its due if it were released amid 2009’s Oscar contenders. That may be true, as it is a thick, creepy, complicated film. It has set the bar high for the 2010 Oscar race, though, and deserves to be remembered when those votes are tallied late this year.
Ben Kingsley stands out, as he always does, in the wonderful cast. Max Von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Mark Ruffalo, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson… not a weak one in the bunch. There are many reasons to see this film again, not the least of which is to enjoy the ensemble cast’s excellent work.
The main reason may be to connect the dots for oneself, as the film certainly throws audiences off the scent time and again. The conclusion is perfectly drawn, with some room for ambiguity… just enough to satisfy the kind of paranoia of everyday life. The film studies that paranoia in a more complete and interesting way than “The Crazies” could hope to.
The next-best reason, though, is to enjoy and learn from a film that doesn’t pander to a modern audience’s lowest expectations. “Shutter Island” is dressed up as a thriller, or even a horror film. But unlike most films of those genres, it takes responsibility for itself. The violence and danger involved is not the kind that we like to see up on a movie screen that helps us convince ourselves that we’re safe, normal, sane in our own world. It’s the real kind… the kind with stacked bodies and the Nazis responsible for them. The kind with scrambled frontal lobes if a patient… or an investigator… doesn’t step in line. The kind that’s really scary… much more than Government created zombies could ever be. It’s real violence, and real danger. You can’t blow its head off with a shotgun, because then it infects you too.
THE CRAZIES
Directed by: Breck Eisner
Release Date: February 26, 2010
Run Time: 101 Minutes
Country: USA/United Arab Emirates
Rated: R
Distributor: Overture Films
SHUTTER ISLAND
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Release Date: February 19, 2010
Run Time: 138 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
