from book to film: shutter island.

I read Shutter Island a couple of years ago. As is the case with most mysteries, I really enjoyed it until the end. I think it was the same with both Mystic River (read before the movie) and Gone Baby Gone (read after the movie).

I like Lehane. He’s more than a capable mystery writer; he brings that certain rare literary quality to his brand of Boston noir, which I find gripping and authentic. His books suffer the same as many other mysteries—they tend to collapse at the end. But I forgive him this, and I think I‘ve talked about this with other authors. I have no issue with being along for the ride, even if the ultimate destination is disappointing.

But the ending of Shutter Island was—and I was to explain this briefly without any spoilers—so patently ludicrous, on top of which he piled on the most absurd moralizing and pontificating about a subject with which he clearly had no credibility, that I actually found it unforgivable. He ruined a wonderfully spooky, Gothic locked door mystery. As they say up in Beantown, it was “re-tahded.”

But, when I heard the movie version was going to be directed by Scorsese and starring Leo and Mark Ruffalo, I was in. You had me at “Ruffalo”. I was a little wary, because the reviews I read had either deemed it fantastic or awful. But I went with the A.V. Club’s A- rating and bought my $14.50 Arclight ticket.

And I liked it! I thought it was a pretty great film. And it perfectly illustrated my case, that the book is not always better than the movie. Sometimes the latter is far superior. I don’t know if there’s a genre called High Art Pulp, but there should be and Shutter Island, the movie, was a fine example of it.

Here’s what I dug: 1. It was almost like a horror movie, but had enough of a story to keep it from being gross. 2. The soundtrack compiled by Robbie Robertson featured 20th century composers like Penderecki and Morton Feldman, and yet you felt like the music was composed specifically for the film. 3. Mark Ruffalo is ridiculously hot and an interesting actor, and 4. Leo really blew me away. He’s really matured into a powerful screen presence.

So that’s it. I really enjoyed it. Shutter Island the book: eh. Shutter Island the film: nice.

p.s. I hated The Departed. I thought it totally blew.