Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)

Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, and Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine, John Carroll Lynch, Elias Koteas. Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. Cinematography: Robert Richardson. Production design: Dante Ferretti. Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker.

Shutter Island is two hours and 18 minutes long, and it feels like it. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) is almost as long (two minutes shorter) and it doesn't. Yet Martin Scorsese, who made Shutter Island, is one of the few contemporary directors who are spoken of with much the same reverence as Hitchcock. Granted, comparing the two films is unfair: North by Northwest is meant to be giddy fun, constantly on the move, while Shutter Island is a psychological thriller with horror movie overtones and a claustrophobic setting. So perhaps the more appropriate comparison would be one of Hitchcock's explorations of disordered psychology, Psycho (1960) or Vertigo (1958). The former comes in at 109 minutes, the latter at just a few minutes over two hours. The point here is that Hitchcock knew how to tighten things up. Scorsese may know how, but he doesn't seem to care. He lets Shutter Island slop around, losing tension and focus in the process, when all he really has to do is guide us to a surprise twist and shocking climax. I seem to be one of the few who feel that the film is a tedious indulgence in material of no great matter: Its psychology is unconvincing, its characters are toys, and its payoff is rather pat and formulaic. Still, it gets a whopping 8.2 rating from viewers on IMdB, so I seem to be among the few who feel that too much acting and directing talent has been expended on too little.

Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)

Cast: Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan, Nihal G. Koldas, Ayberk Pekcan, Bahar Kerimoglu, Burak Yigit, Erol Afsin, Suzanne Marrot, Serife Kara, Aynur Komecoglu, Sevval Aydin. Screenplay: Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Alice Winocour. Cinematography: David Chizallet, Ersin Gok. Production design: Turker Isci. Film editing: Mathilde Van de Moortel. Music: Warren Ellis.

The sheer energy that bursts from the screen as the five girls in Mustang play and rebel is the film's greatest strength. It's a story about five Turkish girls in a small village, orphaned sisters raised by their grandmother and an uncle, whose joie de vivre gets them into trouble when a busybody neighbor sees them playing with some male schoolmates, celebrating the arrival of the end of term, and interprets their horseplay as shamefully erotic. The girls are swiftly imprisoned in their home, which becomes a "school for wives," as the youngest girl, Lale (Günes Sensoy), puts it in her occasional voiceover commentary. Eventually, two of the girls are married off, one commits suicide, and two escape to Istanbul, which evokes for them what Moscow did for the sisters in Chekhov's play. The casting is the chief marvel of the film -- none of the girls is a professional actress and they aren't really siblings -- and director and co-writer Deniz Gamze Ergüven makes the most of it. She's less successful at handling the more sensational elements of the plot, the molestation of some of the girls and the suicide, which are treated a little too obliquely. The film was not received well in the Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but since it was co-produced by France, Germany, and Turkey, it was eligible to be submitted as the French contender for the Oscar, and earned a nomination.