Beyond Shutter Island

Last night, Netflix sent along a copy of Shutter Island. I had forgotten that it had entered the queue -- we have a practiced tendency to preload the thing based on particular actors or directors without too much other information. As Leonardo DiCaprio is one of our favorites, he becomes a "first-round default". Before we sat down to view the thing, Kim looked up a few reviews and stayed with me to watch only rather reluctantly, now expecting only violence and scariness and little else.

The music turned out to be, by far, the best thing about this movie. I was taken by surprise when we started hearing the likes of Max Richter and Brian Eno, and it just kept coming -- stuff by John Adams, John Cage, Krzysztof Penderecki, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison and more. And it was all interwoven into the film with a very subtle touch. Really interesting was a mix by Robbie Robertson that played during the final credits roll, overlaying Max Richter's On The Nature of Daylight with (the late/great) Dinah Washington's rendition of This Bitter Earth.




This Bitter Earth / On The Nature of Daylight Mix