Continuum

The other day I was at a friend’s house. He was looking for a corkscrew and couldn’t find it. Fumbling through one drawer he asked another friend to take a look in the junk drawer—pointing to one just down from where he was rummaging. “Junk drawer? That’s an intimate thing!” said the one to the other.  Filled with things too precious to discard but neither valued, neither useful nor useless—in some sense like the treasures tucked away by a child in a shoe box and shoved under the bed or buried by a tree in the back yard. They are like souvenirs taken from sojourns as though they were the deepening of childhood memories: sluggishly past traumas, whizzing by the mundane, dawdling in the company of the cherished and monumental, or just pebbles in shoes. Intimate perhaps because we often feel as though we are those junk drawers: cobbled together with miscellany that doesn’t quite seem to fit together, point to anything larger or say anything—anything; just a discarded mess of unattended to questions. Baubles.

Chad Irwin’s Patchwork Junk Drawer deals in these baubles. His is the amalgam of dust and detritus all too often discarded into drawers like these or tossed to the side of the road or passed by without any thought. There he pauses and contemplates, sifts through the confusion and re-envisions it into art. A bottle cap, denim patch, button and bone become Coelacanth. The discarded becomes the “discarded, found and re-integrated” just like the prehistoric fish once thought extinct but now rediscovered and highly sought after by museums and collectors.

His medium is just junk: frayed pieces of yarn, buttons, broken shells, rusted nails and cast off on canvases and in frames which look equally regal. It’s a hard sell to a culture so enamored by the pristine, and who already threw this stuff away once before. But where most see irrelevance, Irwin finds a challenge. May be its out of his own brokenness (or may be its in response to the shattered he’s encountered) mingling with an out-and-out dissatisfaction with the status quo that necessitates his humble attempt at mending. That’s why he collects, catalogs and assembles as if he were an archeologist, or anthropologist, but instead of deciphering and piecing back together what was, he attempts to study the discard in order to re-shape it into what could be. His is not about answers rather possibilities. And that is most what a junk drawer represents: the perpetual hope for purpose, usefulness and meaning, but always teetering with apprehension—flirting with irrelevance. That is the challenge in each of his pieces for us. First a confrontation with the garbage, then a reconciliation, or at least, the prospect of one. He obliges his viewer to reconsider value both their own and in general.

Patchwork Junk Drawer will be on display at Gallery 210 from September 17th until October 16th 2010. It will feature more than 20 works by local artist and Pennsylvania transplant, Chad M. Irwin. There will be an opening reception Friday, September 17, 6:00-8:00 PM. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. General gallery hours are from 9:00 a.m. – Noon, Monday thru Friday and 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Sundays.

Gallery 210 is currently housed inside LifeLink Church at the corner of Cooper and Walker.

1015 S. Cooper St. | Memphis, TN 38104-5614 | (901) 377-3372.

David Taylor paints a portrait of the value of local art and explains the importance of artists in the Body of Christ; also detailing a vision for both reaching artists and improving the stature of the Church as a culture maker.

David Taylor-In His Own Words from The Austin Stone on Vimeo.

John Hodges, one time conductor of the Germantown Orchestra and student of Leonard Bernstein, talks about transcendence: what it means and how one accomplishes it through the window of art and music.

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Ben Cumming, scholar and writer, lectures on the value of simply enjoying literature. Never disagreeing that there can be gain from critical analysis, he, nevertheless, concludes that not all stories require such a scientific approach and that substantial value is lost if delight is set aside in favor of criticism.

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Regularly has the question been put to me in some form either open ended or directly, “What is the purpose of art?” Since the Reformation, art has been looked at as a means to an end: to tell stories to the illiterate or illustrate a truth better said then seen. There are those who believe it to be merely propaganda: a means to proselytize or spread the gospel message. And then there’s the “secular” world who considers art sometimes as a means of provocation, sometimes as escape, and always a vehicle for self-expression.

But consider the purpose of food and drink. They certainly exist as fuel for the body—sustenance necessary to maintain our bodily routine and perpetuate our daily labors, but is this the sum total even the greater portion? The psalmist tells us “Taste and know that the Lord is good.” The implication is that the smorgasbord of flavor in food has a role in reminding us of God’s goodness and His superabundant blessing and bounty. Then there is the Eucharist where bread and wine together tell us about the being and promise of Christ: also implied is the superabundant blessing and His life sustaining quality. One could go further to the agricultural portion of food; the rain that falls on everyone’s crops is what some might call “common grace”; the tilling of the earth, the sowing and harvesting is reminiscent of man’s first call to stretch out the Garden of God across the whole world; and what of the many parables which Christ analogically connects to food and the agrarian life? To regard, then, only the caloric portion of food and drink is to flatten out its rich potential.

Imagine if in describing something as commonplace as food how severe the risk of fixing its purpose; what risk then exists when demanding “purposiveness” of something as grand as beauty and art? The word is reductionistic, and this is to be avoided. One should not deny that art has purpose, nor be surprised that it can serve many purposes at once, but should not demand that all art fit or embrace a single intent. To do so limits the possibilities of how God (not man) tends to work by repurposing things, yet the common fear is that it will be misappropriated. Where does their distrust lie? Not then in the artist.

The latest show to hit Midtown Memphis’ still new but increasingly potent Gallery 210 is a collaboration between Chris Nadaskay and Melinda Eckley titled Sitting up with the Dead—according to them a distinctly southern tradition—a vigil over the recently departed. “Who’s passed?” one might ask. According to Nadaskay and Eckley it is modern culture’s place of archeological importance; it is the enforced expectations of heirlooms restricting the future, both individually and culturally.

The show will exhibit a museum like atmosphere in an attempt to encapsulate the feeling that each piece is a “remnant of some future past”—excavated and historically meaningful. But what is it present-humanity culturally esteems, and how will its treasures be perceived when exhumed? What contribution, if any, will they make? Will they liberate, enlighten or impede?

Nadaskay and Eckley are both artists of repute who have a local tradition. Both are professors at Union University; Eckley is also an alumni of Memphis College of Art. Nadaskay currently works in “mixed media/ceramic wall relief”; while Eckley creates sculptural installations.

The show opens with a reception and artist lecture and runs from July 16 – August 15, 2010. The opening night reception (July 16th 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.) is open and free to the public. General gallery hours are from 9:00 a.m. – Noon, Monday thru Friday and 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Sundays. For more information please call (901) 377-3372.

Gallery 210 is currently housed inside LifeLink Church at the corner of Cooper and Walker.

1015 S. Cooper St. | Memphis, TN 38104-5614 | (901) 377-3372.

Beauty is passé. It is kitsch. It is to be avoided. So say the modernist artist and the postmodernist philosopher. Take Gilles Deleuze who says of beauty that it is irrelevant and in actuality a lie—an obfuscation of the univocity of the supreme truth of chaos, or as Jacob Rogozinski writes the “supreme order” found only in primal Chaos (a perversion, for sure, of Aristotelian wisdom). Enter Hans Rookmaaker and Francis Schaeffer—their raised voices, together, decried this flight from classical forms of beauty, toward the nihilism they pronounced inherent in all forms of abstraction. It is their voices that we still hear and which overwhelmingly shape the tenor of the contemporary Christian aesthetic; the one in which Marcel Duchamp, his Dadaists, the surrealists, the cubists, and the abstract expressionists are all rejected as anarchic, dehumanizing, immoral and bereft of beauty. In so much, beauty in Christian culture is understood to be best exemplified as anything pre-modern; therefore, in this Christian economy, Caravaggio is unquestionably superior to Mark Rothko and any landscape painting, ala Thomas Kinkade, is indisputably more excellent than Picasso’s Guernica. Certainly, Rookmaaker and Schaeffer were at least fractionally right in their concern over the artist as provocateur intent on destabilizing the moral and true (consider Serrano’s Piss Christ) and rightfully afraid of the Derridean and Deleuzean themes such as unconditional freedom, erasure, absence and chance (leading to an absolute dissolution of transcendence), which permeate the intention of much of modern art. But as Christians have defined beauty, so, too, might the modernist elite find vindication for their rejection of it; for the Christian churchmen appears attracted to beauty only in its burlesque. Nevertheless, the modern artist has not found complete escape. Many modern pieces are both transcendent as well as beautiful even if not classically so; the problem lies, then, in the limitations both sides have placed on the category of beauty: what constitutes it and what is allowed under its nomenclature, and both sides seemingly display ignorance as it turns to the nature of beauty. Therefore, I find it necessary to ask and resolve the question: What, then, is beauty?

To start let’s consider the current state of beauty—on the one side much maligned and discarded, on the other side wanting, at its best. Why so? For very different reasons but the same root cause: a distinction made between it and the sublime first with Longinus in his treatise, On the Sublime (1^st C. AD) and culminating with Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment. The sublime is that which is so immense, grand or incalculable that it seemingly surpasses our own capacity to grasp or understand it and even escapes any attempt to represent it; instead, it exists only formless as thought. Beauty, on the other hand, is something ordinary—an aesthetical assessment properly applied to a common “coat, house or flower”[i]. The Kantian or Hegelian devotee marks the sublime as provocation to thought leading to pure reason—a triumphal mastery over the mystery of the unknown—and beauty, a simple trifling, incontrovertibly inferior (inferred in Critique of Judgment by terms like play and subjective universality) to the sublime. From this we arrive at the current perception of beauty as “the pretty, the merely decorative, or the inoffensively pleasant.”[ii] So, too, do postmodern assemblies wish to break from beauty, which requires embodiment—an obvious burr to sustaining their own disbelief in some unifying order. They, therefore, contend beauty is a subterfuge concocted to suppress the truth of the primordial nothing, the complete mystery of the veil and the resultant unknowability of anything transcendent. Thus beauty is discarded, and the objective (consider order or form—classically attributed to beauty—rather than absolutism) along with it, by association (all the more easily since it is trivial to begin with). Hence, in order to elevate reason or unseat it, the beautiful must first be diminished—reduced to kitsch—lest anyone be distracted from the fact of sola-thought (belief in belief itself); whether it be maddening chance—in all of its alterity, conceived but never grasped—or the rigor of reason leading to a comprehensive metanarrative.

Christians should recognize (but too often don’t) the dilemma resulting from a framework founded on beauty’s demise or marginalization; for the claim of its authenticity depends on the unrepresentable God who became representable as a supreme act of beauty. Instead, western Christianity follows the course of the Enlightenment placing its primary emphasis on biblical exposition, systematic theologies and God (or the sublime) as primarily resident and accessible only in reason and contemplation; it habitually considers beauty and art only as each might play its demure but second-class supporting role as illustrative, possessing no value in and of itself and dangerous if not pedagogical. In so doing, modern Christianity has affirmed the Enlightenment ontology of man as mind on a stick rather than the more expansive biblical definition: mind, body and spirit.[iii] In fact, a Christian Enlightenment mentality has somehow conjoined mind and spirit and set them collectively opposed to the embodied. The common expression, sacred and secular, is its most frequent manifestation, and I believe is very much tied to the severance of the sublime from the beautiful. But embodiment matters! Mainly because as C. S. Lewis reminds us, we are amphibians and in so much biphasic: both material and immaterial. So, it is that art and things are beautiful primarily because they remind us in some small way of the reality of the immaterial. Therefore, sublimity and beauty must be reunified. For it is through form that we engage the unknowable, to do so we must journey outside of the critical texts that have caused its bifurcation. Ergo philosophy and aesthetics aside, we’ll consider the biblical term glory: a term often used to describe majesty, much like Longinus describes the sublime, but also synonymous with beauty, a word otherwise and mysteriously lacking from Holy Scripture (but not in conceptualization only in its orthography), but where it does appear in either form, we’ll find additional characteristics meant to broaden the meaning of the term, and in so much exceed the fashionable but diminutive definition: decorative excess; we’ll find that beauty always points to something greater than itself, and often to something, otherwise, intangible.

Glory, by looking at the Psalms, is a term that seems to encroach on all three of the philosophical transcendentals: truth, goodness and beauty; Donald McGilchrist tells us that when considering sets of three, Christians should not neglect a comparison to the Trinity. Doing so, he describes the intersection likewise: the truth of the Spirit, the goodness of the Father and the beauty of the Incarnate Son. It is beauty that is embodied; it is beauty that is manifestation,[iv] and it is beauty that exists as a pointer to reveal truth and goodness by means of its physical attractiveness—or rather some analogical quality that both invites while urging one to respond to some ideal. Kant tells us in Critique of Pure Reason that we experience and come to know things only through space and time; it is of utmost importance, then, that the transcendent God (transcendent to what? Space and time) becomes tangible and embodied. The person of Christ is, therefore, critical to any complete Christian aesthetic[v] or epistemology, for that matter; He is the pattern by which the amphibious is best observed. He describes himself as a door—not so far removed from the Orthodox tradition of icon as a window into heaven. Beauty always speaks to something other than itself. Even in its apparent baroque-like excesses; where it does not prefigure opulence, but goodness in its ideal state—inviting, generous and replete with the promise of some ontological satisfaction. Consider the psalm, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”[vi] Note the value in sumptuousness rather than scarcity. As if, some repudiation of a neo (or proto)-Manichaeism has always been necessary, and, as if, the representable (all that can be fondled, sniffed, savored, heard or scrutinized) has value beyond its agreeability but never in spite of it; how else can the goodness of God be intimated (certainly not through treatise or sermonizing)?

Looking deeper at beauty (or glory, or splendor, or majesty or awe), we find a breathtaking gamut of definitions determined by philosophers since Plato, though never assembled collectively (and in many cases discarded in part or whole by subsequent thinkers): order, idealness, simplicity, unity, divinity, pleasure, passion and the introspective. Who am I to deny any of these? In fact, I believe glory and biblical beauty make room for each of them, but I do wish to allow the Psalms to, also, expand them. But first let us consider what the Psalms say about God Himself as beautiful (curious that we understand Him to be truth and goodness but often forget the third transcendental, as a result marginalizing its value and that part of God along with it):

I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking Him in His temple.[vii]

It is God’s beauty that draws the psalmist to the Himself, resulting in such an abundant overflow that the psalmist can often be heard thusly:

Sing a new song to the Lord;
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise His name;
proclaim His salvation from day to day.
Declare His glory among the nations,
His wonderful works among all peoples.
Splendor and majesty are before Him;
strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.[viii]

Such that beauty begets beauty: song from God’s glory before us (much like Aristotle’s concept of art as mimetic). This begs the question of the spiritual health of those who do not crave, create or are enrapt by the beautiful (is God to them underwhelming; if so, how then can they desire after His kingdom). Beauty overflows from God and exists because He exists. It is inspired by Him, and when it is found, it always points back to Him. Just as Christ says, “If you know me you know my Father too.”[ix]

To continue, the Psalms tell us that beauty takes various other shapes and can be found in concrete expressions of power[x], truth[xi], creativity[xii], wonder & mystery[xiii], justice[xiv], the infinite[xv] (or sublime), goodness[xvi], joy[xvii] (even its negative, lament, in that it acknowledges the absence of the ideal state), hope[xviii], mercy[xix], as well as kindness[xx] in all its forms. And as is the case with joy and lament, so, too, can each of the others speak to beauty through the via negativia; for beauty always deals in the relationships between things often crossing the chasm separating the real from the ideal state[xxi] as a form of resistance to imperfection in an attempt to create an alternative reality or affect a yearning for it.[xxii] What is important to note in all of this, is that beauty has density. It is a shape with mass and not just a flimsy surface; rather it is a surface through which we see something on the other side. But the surface is required; power cannot be known without some action, truth without a particular or goodness through absence. When these are displayed, there we find beauty. Accordingly, when art attempts to reveal the chaotic truth of a muddled world, or display the power of a symbol, or even attacks the power of a symbol, or shows novelty even through whimsy, it can potentially be classified as beautiful despite its apparent lack of prettiness or the form it takes.

So, looking again at art both the distinctively Christian and the unapologetically modern with the clarity of new eyes—carrying a fresh definition—we might be able to comprehend the thesis that it is notably abandoned in the kitsch and not, as is the common opinion, in an embrace of abstraction; that as Mark Rothko attempted to uncover the truth of the infinite in his iconic paintings or as Picasso demonstrated the injustice and inhumanity perpetrated by German bombers over the Spanish city of Guernica, each navigated their canvases with compasses set to true north: the Judeo-Christian sensitivity to beauty—perhaps unaware themselves they were doing so, but dealing in its currency, nonetheless: the former drawn to an inexplicable vastness and the latter lamenting the injustice of modern warfare. In Daniel Siedell’s essay Embodying Transcendence: Material Spirituality in Contemporary Art,[xxiii] we are given many more such examples then the two I’ve proposed; his book is a considerate, Christian challenge to Schaeffer and his views on modern art. Schaeffer’s adherents demand realism; there is nothing inherently wrong with realism. Historically, the artistic tradition is rich with it, and it has added much to beauty—neither is its well exhausted. But what most Christian artists present today is representation only at the surface, and it is often so flimsy that it mocks the glory we’ve just discussed. As a result passion suffers, and those for whom it is made are steeped in apathy. At best this art is pleasant and adequate hung over a barcalounger; for it is storyboard art that produces only ambivalence; and lacks the creativity and power to foster hope, induce goodness, reveal the infinite, spur a passion to mercy, or a love of truth. Rather, art should exist to collapse the boundary between the sacred and secular; it should be an opportunity to realize that “all actions are liturgical and all artifacts sacraments” and provide a goading to understand how it is possible to make a Eucharistic reality out of all of nature.[xxiv] The often-derided Duchamp, with his readymades, in a certain, sense, comprehends this reality much better than his Christian counterparts. Take for instance the infamous Head of Christ by Warner Sallman, which points to nothing beyond its surface and is every bit as small as Kantian beauty ever was imagined; personally, I’d sooner display R. Mutt’s Fountain; why? Because it implies that an object is not just an object. May be little more, but at least on the right track.

Whether or not beauty is to be preserved or discarded is a question that must be preceded by another: whether or not the current definition is even adequate. As it stands, we experience no loss to lose it; but the real travesty is that beauty has been denuded of its power. What is disputed appears as nothing more than ravenous dogs before a worthless scrap. Instead, a rescue mission must be mounted to resurrect beauty from frivolity. What’s at risk is our ability to know and crave the divine presence; for it is hidden behind a veil unless we have doors and windows to see it, and those doors are always through the “material immanence of [and in] the world.”[xxv] Plato conferred a prophetic calling to the artist. May be it is right to say that the artist can preach, but the expectation of the artist nowadays is far less lofty—almost buffoonery, reduced to a court jester whose accomplishments are for nothing more than amusement. But what the artist can do is provide us tangible representations of God’s power, truth, creativity, wonder, justice, immeasurability, goodness, joy, mercy, and beneficent love—God’s glory and beauty.  Alas, the current state! But beauty doesn’t easily succumb; it persists despite all intentionality to eradicate it. It exists in places most Christians deny, but such is the case with God in His omnipresence—observed when beauty is allowed to flourish in all its originality and glory because all beauty points back to God. What stands in the way of its flourishing is the status quo: the inept definition we’ve all accepted. What’s left, then, is to embrace beauty in the totality of its significance—finally finding revelation as it was meant to be: God affirming, fully and holistically experienced and in no nook or cranny entirely missing.

[ii] Hart, David Bentley. Beauty and the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. pg. 15.

[iii] Matt 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27

[iv] For an excellent, non-philosophical unpacking of the ultimate expression of beauty as an act of goodness, or sacrifice, see Makoto Fujimura’s stirring article: Fallen Towers and the Art of Tea, which can be found in Refractions pg. 43, or online from Image Journal.

[v] Siedell, Daniel A.. God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art. pg. 65-66.

[vi] Psalm 34:8

[vii] Psalm 27:4

[viii] Psalm 96:1-3 & 6

[ix] John 8:19

[x] Psalm 29:3; Psalm 29:9; Psalm 45:3; Psalm 49:16; Psalm 63:2; Psalm 96; Psalm 102:15; Psalm 104:1-4; Psalm 145:11

[xi] Psalm 19:1-4

[xii] Psalm 19; Psalm 139:13-6

[xiii] Psalm 72:18-19; Psalm 78:11b-12; Psalm 97:2-3 & 6

[xiv] Psalm 96; Psalm 97

[xv] Psalm 104:31

[xvi] Psalm 64:10

[xvii] Psalm 16:9; Psalm 149:5

[xviii] Psalm 106:5

[xix] Psalm 3:3; Psalm 79:9; Psalm 84:11; Psalm 108; Psalm 113

[xx] Psalm 96:1-3

[xxi] Hart. Beauty and the Infinite. pg. 20.

[xxii] Siedell. pg. 30.

[xxiii] Ibid. pg. 71.

[xxiv] Ibid. pg 140.

[xxv] Ibid. pg. 32.



To be considered for membership in the Continuum, an artist must have been practicing for a minimum of five years—preferably in a single discipline. Additionally, a portfolio is required which should be compiled and presented considering the following guidelines:

• Include work that spans at least four (4) years of creative life
• With a minimum of five (5) but no more than ten (10) pieces¹
• Use video or recordings if applicable (i.e. performance art)
• A single paragraph (more if necessary) explaining the significance of each submitted piece with details specific to why each piece was selected
• Any publishing credits, awards, etc.
• Any community involvement especially emphasizing art as the vehicle of service

The artist is also asked to answer the following questions:²

• What do truth, beauty, and goodness mean to you as concepts, and, more specifically how do they relate to your own art?
• How do you envision that membership within the Continuum will benefit both you and its members?
• Briefly describe the influence of your faith as it applies to the practice and creation of your art. Is the person of Christ relevant to you as an artist and, if so, how?³

Submit your application for consideration with any questions to jimallman@continuumarts.com or mail to 63 S. Alicia Dr., Memphis, TN 38112.

1. We will consider a single work if substantial (i.e. a published book), though excerpts of other pieces may be requested.
2. The selection panel may request additional information or desire some follow up.
3. Be concise, but consider 500 to 1000 words as a target.

Continuum poet, Jim Allman, reads two poems: Wunderwaffen: Of Spit & Ash, as well as, Of Aquanauts (both to be published in the August 2010 issue of Writers’ Bloc).

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Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?

Throughout Martin Scorsese’s career he has been creating art that seeks to understand the ramifications that guilt, paranoia, and violence have on humanity. In “Raging Bull” Scorsese gave us a man enthralled in violence and self destruction, whose hostilities beget guilt and ultimately humility. “Goodfellas” has Scorsese dealing with men who chose to live in a world of continual violence, and how paranoia and guilt slowly began to destroy that world. With “Cape Fear” Scorsese madly twists the conventional postulations of guilt and justice as the audience is invited to view them through the distorted eyes of Max Cady. Scorsese’s great crime drama “The Departed” displays how devilish violence affects two men who are engaged in the bloodshed for completely different reasons, and how each of them cope with the guilt that stems from their actions. In his twenty-third feature film release (not counting his numerous documentary films, which would take him up to nearly 50) Scorsese takes the audience back to 1954 to explore his preferred themes of guilt, violence, paranoia, and the toll they take on the human psyche.

The film opens on a ship that is shifting along a discomfited sea. Two detectives are bearing towards an island that, we are told, is the site of a high security asylum for the criminally insane. Scorsese’s long time editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, sets the anxious tone from the outset with some remarkably sharp editing. Scorsese also wastes no time transporting his audience back in time to the 1950’s, the era of Film Noir and Hitchcock, not only with costumes and props but more importantly with dialogue, tone, and music. As the detectives, and through voyeuristic association the audience, approach the gates to the asylum the tone and music revel in this bombastic ’50’s style. Like the best movies of that period, Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” generates style and tone with the assistance of the score as well as several intense low and high angled shots that evoke the essence of 1920’s German Expressionism. These cues, from their origins in the ’20’s, to the Noir of the ’50’s, as well as here, intend to set up a world of outlandish events and settings where anything is possible. This creates a world surrounded in mystery and danger that is always dangling somewhere on the edge of feeling like a dream, or in many cases a nightmare. Scorsese even utilizes artificial, rear projection style backgrounds in certain shots to give that 50’s stylized look to the film. There is no question, once the detectives arrive at the asylum, Scorsese’s propensity is clearly driven to create a world as close to Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”, or Tourneur’s “Out of the Past”, as possible. If the audience has not jumped on board with that conception within the first five minutes then they may likely miss much of the intention of this scintillating film.

The two detectives are sent to Shutter Island (where names and titles evolve in their motivation and meaning as we draw closer to the truth) for the purpose of investigating the inexplicable disappearance of one of the asylum’s inmates. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers another excellent performance in this film (his fourth outing with Mr. Scorsese) as Detective Teddy Daniels . The audience is told that he is a very respectable detective, who has a history of getting the job done at any cost. Through a series of striking visions into the mind of this man, motivations of guilt and regret that are surrounded by violence begin to unfold as Daniels’ inducement to discover the truth comes into focus. His partner Detective Chuck Aule, the always cool and reserved Mark Ruffalo, is working with Detective Daniels for the first time. The bond they construct in this hostile environment appears reliable, yet the uncertainty of having a new partner slowly builds into paranoia as the world around them begins to fall apart. Of course the world of Shutter Island never evokes stability for the Detectives or the audience from the moment we step foot on the island. This is due, in no small part, to the colorful cast of  characters within the asylum, all played brilliantly by an all-star supporting cast. We first meet Deputy Warden McPherson, played by John Carroll Lynch, who can never quite convince us that he is the stalwart of truth that he intends to imbue. The detectives are promptly introduced to Ben Kingsley’s Dr. Cawley, whose name itself supplicates an association with the harsh nagging of a crow’s call, and yet Kingsley’s tempered delivery appears to belie the moniker. Max von Sydow delivers a haunting performance as Dr. Naehring who appears to seethe with mendacious intent in every scene. Jackie Earl Haley and Elias Koteas offer unnerving performances that intensify the uncertainty and paranoia that the audience already feels from running through the labyrinthine implications presented by the clues DiCaprio’s Detective Daniels has picked up along the way.  As Detective Daniels receives information from the striking women in the cast, whether it be the elegant Michelle Williams as his lamented wife or from the ever splendiferous Patricia Clarkson as the missing patient, it becomes clear that the truth of the island may be far more sinister than our detective could have dreamed.

Scorsese takes delight in driving the audience into this world of fear and paranoia through the nightmarish settings of the maximum security wing of the asylum or the unforgiving and overbearing natural settings in the woods, the edges of cliffs, and the sea. Scorsese uses these settings as well as the visions into the mind of Daniels to offset the audiences ability to clearly delineate reality from the dream. These excursions allow DiCaprio to disinter the emotional depths within the character of Daniels, which affords him one of his greatest performances to date. These scenes also carry the audience along an emotional thrill ride that captivates and decimates our expectations, leaving us as much of an emotional wreck as many of the characters in the film.  It is in this construct that Scorsese uses the film to ask deeper questions about film theory, and the audiences’ voyeuristic response to what is being presented, that opens another level of complexity to the film that the story alone does not demand. As this film draws towards it’s end it becomes clear that Scorsese is just as concerned with provoking the boundaries of where film can take us as he is with telling a great story. In “Shutter Island” he exceptionally succeeds in doing both.

Several years ago Quentin Tarantino said that Martin Scorsese was not directing films that were provocative and edgy like his early work, and that Scorsese’s work had become lazy. Scorsese is a legend in film making, with no need to prove anything. Here he proves that he is still enraptured with the medium of film and that he will continue to challenge himself and his audiences to continue to be moved by the aggregation of images, music, performances, and themes that form the art of film.

cast & credits

Teddy Daniels: Leonardo DiCaprio

Chuck Aule: Mark Ruffalo

Dr. Cawley: Ben Kingsley

Dr. Naehring: Max von Sydow

Dolores: Michelle Williams

Rachel 1: Emily Mortimer

Rachel 2: Patricia Clarkson

George: Jackie Earle Haley

Warden: Ted Levine

Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Martin Scorsese

. Written by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. Running time: 138 minutes. Rated R (for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity).