Movie v. Book: "Shutter Island"

(I will do my best not to spoil the Gigantic Ending Plot Twist--anything even mildly approaching spoilers will be under a cut.)

The general critical consensus appears to be that while "Shutter Island" isn't Scorsese's best film, it's serviceable enough, not particularly good or bad. I must beg to differ. Discussions of "Scorsese's best" can wait for another time, but I thought "Shutter Island" was a fine film that handily illustrated the difference between horror and gore for the sake of horror and gore and true suspense. The entire exposition of the story (and it is a bit long to set up, but there's a worthy reason why) was effectively haunting and tense, but without the pointless stabbing and flowing of blood that would usually turn me off a movie like this. (Stories set in insane asylums are 50-50 with me: half of the time, I get so hung up on whatever horrible "treatments" are in use that I can't concentrate on the main plot.) The mood of this piece of work is Menacing, with a capital M. Scorsese wrings menace out of every frame, every set piece, every character, even every drop of rain that accompanies the storm that settles over the Island. Is Teddy Daniels, federal marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients at the asylum correct that there's a massive conspiracy at work? Are the inmates tortured as the subjects of horrific experiments, or is the hospital what its doctors claim that is--a place of healing for the most damaged people? As Teddy Daniels, Leonardo DiCaprio is fabulous--brooding, twisted, but actively trying to get to the bottom of the mystery as it unfolds.* Michelle Williams is equally effective as Teddy's dead wife, who appears in dreams and visions, a sort of Lady Macbeth, always prompting and prodding, tragic and lost. The final revelation of the story is held right up until the last moment, but it's well worth waiting for. There's some gorgeous cinematography along the way, too (my favorite shot is the one chosen for the poster--DiCaprio with the matches, trying vainly to see what's in front of him in the halls of the maximum security wing, darkened and terribly Menacing.

Anyway, yebisu9 and I enjoyed the film so much that we went out and bought the book immediately afterwards. Lehane's writing is crisp and fast-paced; the screenwriters were wise to include huge swathes of dialogue and speeches verbatim in their script. Lehane excels with dialogue; I can hear the characters' voices in my heads, and they're not necessarily those of their on-screen actors, which is saying something for the quality of the written work vs. the movie. There's slightly more detail in the book about the nature of the recurring flashbacks and the circumstances leading up to them. In fact, the dream sequences in the book are a lot more terrifying than the ones in the film; they hit a lot more mature and sexual themes. (The movie had to simplify a bit to get its point across.) Both film and book are great works of suspense and mystery, but I'm a little biased to the film and the note it chooses to end on. Either one or both are highly recommended, and I can't decide whether I wish I'd read the book first or not.

* I always forget that DiCaprio can act. My mental default image for him is always of my Japanese JHS students squealing over his picture, a still from "Titanic". It's always a pleasant surprise then, when he actually gets up there and does something with those pretty boy looks.