The importance of compelling characters — again!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/movies/07scorcese.html?ref=movies

Based on an exceptionally tricky 2003 mystery novel by Dennis Lehane, “Shutter Island” wears its something-elseness proudly, even defiantly. It’s a true oddity, an outlier, as isolated and enigmatic as the gloomy, rain-whipped island on which the action takes place. The hero, a federal marshal named Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a tormented soul, the type of man to whom Mr. Scorsese has never been a stranger, from his first movie, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door?” (1968), through “Mean Streets” (1973) and “Taxi Driver” (1976) and “Raging Bull” (1980) and “The Aviator” (2004), in which Mr. DiCaprio played a Howard Hughes beset by hallucinations, bizarre phobias and creeping paranoia. Teddy’s emotional troubles manifest themselves, for most of the film, as very bad dreams — many of them about his dead wife — and the most spectacular movie migraines since James Cagney in “White Heat.”

“When I read the script,” Mr. Scorsese said, “I was just taken by the character, felt very empathetic with him.”

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It’s hard not to suspect, as you listen to him discoursing with a certain relish about the technical problems of the film and the rigors of shooting in a mental hospital — “It’s not a good feeling, being there every day” — that he has come to a point in his career where he actually thrives on difficulty, almost can’t do without it. Mr. DiCaprio described the process of working out the nuances of Teddy’s character as “pretty intense, because I didn’t really understand how emotionally complex this character is until Marty and I started breaking down this cathartic journey he goes on.” He paused and added: “When you’re working with someone like Martin Scorsese, you know you’re going to have to go places emotionally that you didn’t ever foresee.”