The movie that almost broke Martin Scorsese: “I didn’t want to go back there”
Art’s subjectiveness is a fascinating thing to try and wrap your head around. For instance, one man’s masterpiece is another man’s disaster, while a piece of music may mean different things emotionally to different people. Regarding filmmaking, some people will put forth the idea that there are objectively good and bad films. Sometimes this holds true, but other times it doesn’t – and sometimes audiences may feel wildly differently about a movie than the person who made it. Take Martin Scorsese, for example. One of his most popular and acclaimed movies almost broke him mentally – so much so that he regretted making it.
In 2007, Scorsese finally achieved something that most observers felt he should have already attained many times over. When he won ‘Best Director’ at the Academy Awards for his ludicrously entertaining Boston crime thriller The Departed, it was his sixth nomination and first victory. In truth, many saw it as a mea culpa from the Academy, who should have already rewarded him with the trophy for the likes of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. After all, few people would seriously argue that The Departed is the very best Scorsese picture.
Whatever the case, because The Departed also won ‘Best Picture’ and banked $291 million at the worldwide box office, Scorsese found himself in the strongest industry position he’d arguably ever been in. He initially toyed with making Silence, a long-gestating passion project about 17th-century priests whose faith is tested when they search for their missing mentor in Japan, but then another opportunity came his way.
In October 2007, Scorsese signed up to reunite with Leonardo DiCaprio for the fourth time on a moody psychological thriller based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. Shutter Island was a mind-bending mystery thriller about a US Marshal who travels to the titular island to investigate an atmospheric mental facility after one of its patients disappears. Critics received it rapturously and it performed even better than The Departed at the box office, making $294 million worldwide. In fact, at that point, it was Scorsese’s most commercially successful movie ever – so why did he feel so bad about it?
When Scorsese spoke to Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes about Shutter Island, he admitted to feeling extremely low when he began editing the movie. He admitted, “Once I finished the shoot, it was very difficult for me to even leave the house. Somehow, it was so oppressive, the making of that film.” He quickly clarified, “Not with the actors – I’m talking about the mood and the tone of it and the story.”
In truth, Shutter Island is a tonally heavy movie. It pays homage to film noir and horror while weaving a tale of mental illness, grief, tragedy, and a main character who can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction. These themes must have profoundly seeped into Scorsese’s head, because they genuinely knocked him off-kilter for a long period.
“You didn’t know if anybody was telling the truth, even if they existed, you know?” he mused. “What is real? What isn’t real? Who’s dead or who’s not? It really got me. That first two or three months, I was very, very down about it and very depressed about everything. And then, finally, somehow, the picture came through. But after that, I didn’t want to go back there.”
Indeed, despite Scorsese winning plaudits for the movie and being at the very peak of his commercial success because of it, he later told GQ it was a mistake to even sign up for the film. He confessed that finally nabbing that elusive Oscar “encouraged me to make another picture with Shutter Island. It turned out I should have gone on probably to do Silence.”
In the end, he did get around to Silence, which was released in December 2016 and truly satisfied him creatively. However, the notion of art being entirely subjective reared its head yet again in frustrating fashion. Ironically, after making a box office smash that he hated, the passion project he loved became his least commercially successful film in decades. Ain’t it always the way?
