Trying to get
through a busy schedule and our hasty lifestyle, people of this present society
escape to theaters to forget their problems and the life they live. Cinemas
have become a haven that shelter us and let us submerge into a reality
constructed by a visionary director, weather it be one that is passionate or
just getting by the given script (a industrially generic director). Never the
less, we all are accustomed to the usual Famous Players, Guzzos, and other
mainstream cinemas. In this semester’s “Introduction to Film” class, given this
assignment, I attended a repertory cinema and viewed Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter
Island”. I had already seen this film at a Guzzo on its opening night because
the preview had caught my attention. When I realized that this film is also
being screened at a repertory cinema I decided to watch it once more to see if
the experience altered my feelings about the film itself.
I
chose to attend Cinema du Parc, which gave me a sort of culture shock. The
venue was a lot smaller and compressed compared to the spacial grandeur that is offered by
Hollywood picture screening theaters. The cinema also had a mezzanine gallery
containing works that can be classified in the world of cinematic visual art. This was
an opportunity to broaden my artistic horizons and kill two birds with one
stone since I had the privilege of viewing a work of art (the main film) and
seeing photographs in a mini gallery before hand. The hall of the screened
movie was somber and gloomier than the habitual ones I’ve previously sat in. Dim
light washed the room. The rows of the seats were closer together and I
personally felt compact and more to myself. The feeling was much like being a
part of a pack of sardines except for people weren’t representing the sardines
in this simile; the seats were. The room wasn’t even half capacitated. With the
emptiness of this hall I experienced individualism. There was no pressure to
change your facial expression according to the audience’s reaction (not that I
personally do). You were basically emotionally unaccompanied. The film evoked
your sentiments and you were forced to think, suffer, undergo crude emotions,
and let the atmosphere alleviate your cinematic experience.
The
cinema really reflected the film in a way. This foreign atmosphere was
mysterious to me. Dark and stuffy, it made me feel like Leonardo Dicaprio in
the moving picture, in a place surrounded by people I wasn’t used to being
around. This film starts off much
like any other Hollywood one would, with a storyline that seems usual, and
previously used by other directors. As the film progresses though you see that
Scorsese has made a work of art. The decor and
staging is incredible and full of dramatic potential. The story is set in 1954,
where a martial named Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck arrive at a
mental hospital on a secluded island of New England. Shutter Island is located
on an old concentration camp that was converted into a psychiatric institution
for the criminally insane after the war. The story starts off usual and we can
assume we know what will happen. Even if the actors are renowned and easy to
identify with, they seem to give a different and more passionate performance in
“Shutter Island”. The cinematography clearly doesn’t go unnoticed. Scorsese’s
mise-en-scene is undoubtedly thought out and has a tremendous impact on the
viewer. This is particularly seen in the scene where Dicaprio places all his
deceased children in order of height and Scorsese gives us a “bird’s eye view”
medium shot that is kept for quite a few seconds.
The strongest scenes of the film are dream-like. These are numerous
scenes of vivid flashbacks. One consists
of a female corpse along with a young girl and several other victims of war all
frozen together that is monochromatically painted with a cyan color. Another is
one of Teddy Daniels’ frequent nightmares where he re witnesses his wife dieing
in the fire and she slowly disintegrates in his arms while standing in a sort
of ash-rain. These scenes, although beautiful, provoke the viewers and force them to feel. Paranoia is also
a psychological disorder constantly present in the narrative and is embodied by
the light and shadow, which stimulates the spectator’s imagination. The
director establishes a grey area between reason and madness and we are
sometimes (I’d say often) unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. On the
topic of sound, Scorsese does make great use of it non-diegetically, although
not in a cliché fashion. It enrobes the film perfectly and respects its themes.
After the film had
ended, I came to the conclusion that repertory cinema isn’t a pastime or some
place you go to simply “do something tonight”. This was an experience that
drifted from the spacious halls, comfortable seating, and wide variety of
snacks and accompaniments. People who attended repertory cinemas were there to
pay for something worth watching and thinking over. They were individuals and
not a bunch of teenagers uniting just for the sake of going out. It was
refreshing to see a storyline that wasn’t expected and completely foreshadowed
by its previews. The experience at the repertory cinema compared to a
commercial theater was that the viewer was expected to have the film as a focal
point and not their surroundings.
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