The Man In the Iron Mask

The same friend with whom I watched The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was all hitting a third Dumas adaptation on a separate evening.  So, in order to keep the time periods symmetrical, we watched one made between the other two: 1998’s The Man In the Iron Mask.

I had seen this movie only once before, when it was actually out in theaters, and I can say that my opinions on it have changed in almost everything except that I am still in love with Jeremy Irons. Hilariously, with the five year gap between watching the two musketeer movies the first time around, I didn’t notice that Irons plays the role Charlie Sheen plays in the 1993 film.  The casting directors were clearly reading different books.

Speaking of which, both films definitely made me want to read them, especially considering the different dynamics between the characters in each.  If you consider all the comparative casting, the only characterization that’s truly similar is Gerard Depardieu and Oliver Platt as Porthos and, in the sole case of the four, Platt does better despite the much worse dialogue.

One of the big factors that changed in my assessment between ’98 and ’10 is Leonardo DiCaprio.  I was not the world’s biggest DiCaprio fan at the time – please remember it was just one year since Titanic had hit theaters, and I was irked by everyone’s assumption that, as a teenage girl, I should be in love with Jack Dawkins. (Victor Garber was much better looking, I always thought, if we’re being shallow.)

But as he’s gotten older, I’ve come to respect DiCaprio as an actor. (The Departed helped a lot.) And now that my opinions of him have changed, it’s interesting to go back and watch this performance, or set of performances, with what he’ll become in mind.  It’s still not staggering acting, but it’s not a movie that allows for staggering acting.  Even so, it’s remarkable how clearly he distinguishes the brothers with small choices and details; he almost looks physically different in each part. There’s some real craft even in the middle of a movie this silly.

(Also, Peter Sarsgaard is in it! I was happy to see him, even if in such a minor role.)

This is not to say all the acting was stellar.  Besides Depardieu, Judith Godrèche was a hot mess.  I wasn’t thrilled with her in L’Auberge Espagnol either, but in English she’s just wretched. And Gabriel Byrne, as he so often does, approaches a role that is fundamentally silly with a hand-wringing earnestness that seemed occasionally out of place. (His character kills an assassin by using a rapier as a thrown weapon. Hand to god. That should be your sign, Mr. Byrne, that your movie is fundamentally silly.)

The filming is also fairly lackluster, if serviceable.  It’s blandly pretty without being at all distinctive; it could be one of a dozen Hollywood costume dramas from the sets and the cinematography.  Still, there was nothing objectionable, really, just nothing that grabbed me as a viewer.

Still, between Irons and DiCaprio and a decent if mediocre screenplay, it’s an entertaining hour or two.  Neither as good as the one, nor as bad as the other, this third Dumas adaptable falls squarely in the “Well, it was okay” camp for me.

Rating: C+ A few merits kick it up beyond average, but on the whole, a decent if unremarkable film.

Shutter Island

I believed that Shutter Island had been, at least in part, spoiled for me.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I don’t know that it can be. (That said, as fair warning, this review will contain major plot points, some of which are twists, so read on at the risk of disagreeing with me. Spoilers also follow for Citizen Kane and The Usual Suspects.)

Given that the film is set in a mental institution for the criminally insane, it seems only natural that the viewer should question Marshal Teddy Daniels’ sanity from the get-go. If he isn’t crazy when the film begins, you suspect he might become so by the end. That is often how this sort of thriller works.

What is interesting, and what makes this film pack such a punch, is the way in which the story unfolds. Though I knew, definitively, that Daniels was a patient because of a co-worker with little regard for people who wait for DVD releases, I did not know all the details of his illness – nor why he was institutionalized. These are much more intriguing questions, and led to a whole different sort of suspense than I might have felt when seeing the movie cold for the first time.

(Sort of cold, at least. Trailers, while a great marketing tool, are hell on movies like Shutter Island. How to cut it without misleading the audience as to the movie’s nature, while at the same time giving nothing away? Here’s how they did, and it’s a decent job, but I don’t envy the original editor:)

This film is not a noir in any traditional sense (watch, readers, as I exercise the power of this blog to review mysteries and thrillers as well!), but it does engage some noir-ish elements. Not just fedoras, no. The isolation of the main character, as it grows throughout the film, teeters on the line between legitimate fear and paranoia. After all, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. The sense of a corrupt world closing in, literally cutting off escape, is oppressive from the outset – the movie begins on a boat, and the captain tells Daniels and his partner that he will leave the moment the marshals are ashore.

In some ways, knowing Daniels was a patient set me up to be duped even more fully by the actual reveal of what has been going on for the entirety of the movie. The twist, such as it is, reveals the difference between, say, The Sixth Sense and The Village.

In the latter, even those audience members who hadn’t guessed the ending where left with a simple “Oh, I see” moment; the emotional impact of the film, if it had any, was located elsewhere. I liked parts of The Village, though it had quite a few flaws, but what I liked best were characters and their interactions, and the twist had little to do with that.

In The Sixth Sense, on the other hand, the moment I knew the twist, I had to recontextualize everything in the film. Every moment, every interaction, was new because I understood it in a new light. It made me want to see the film again immediately.

That’s also the difference between “Rosebud is the sled” and “Verbal is Kaiser Soze.” It’s not that one movie is better than the other, in this case: it’s that in one, the mystery is a pretense to drive the plot, in the other, the entire movie is a trick.

(Confession: I love trick movies. Inception, The Illusionist, The Brothers Bloom – yeah.)

I think Shutter Island falls firmly in the camp of The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. The ending is so viscerally affecting because, in part, it forces you to shift your perceptions of everything that’s come before it. That’s not good or bad, nor does it effect the rewatchability of a given movie. But it does mean that, in a very particular sense, you only get one first time.

To say the movie is well-directed seems redundant, given that it’s a Scorsese film. But he really is on form here. Critical reception was mixed, but I think that’s in part a function of the kind of film he was making; a lot of the bad reviews accuse it of not being creepy enough. But Shutter Island is not a horror film, and I don’t think it was intended to be. It may not be a masterpiece on the level of The Departed or Taxi Driver, but the craft involved is undeniable.

The acting is also standout. This would be a very easy movie to get campy in, but the cast collectively resists the temptation. Leonardo diCaprio is strong (though given that Inception followed this movie so closely, the two performances can’t help but be compared), laying a solid groundwork for the denouement without tipping his hand too soon. Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley, however, cemented the movie’s foundation and were right on target throughout. Patricia Clarkson is excellent in a small but pivotal role.

Grade: B+ A few imperfections, but on the whole, well ahead of the curve.