Shutter Island: the flood

Up until now the Shutter Island (both film and novel) - Brontë mentions were slowly dripping. Today it looks like a flood.

About the novel itself. The Toledo Blade:

Asked which gothic novelists he has been inspired by, [author of the novel, Dennis] Lehane says, "Oh, the girls. The Brontes, Mary Shelley," citing the authors of Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), and Frankenstein. (Colette Bancroft)

The Daily Reflector:

A best seller, Lehane’s “Shutter Island” deliberately combined Gothic settings, B movies themes, and a pulp-fiction aura. Lehane describes it as a hybrid of books by the Brontë sisters and 1956’s paranoia-laden “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Maybe not the stuff of Academy Awards, but certainly topics that sell movie tickets. (Shirrel Rhoades)

The Oklahoman:

Crime novelist Dennis Lehane’s stated intent with his critically lauded 2003 novel "Shutter Island” was to make a modern Gothic novel in the vein of the Bronte sisters, a "Wuthering Heights” set in a spooky Massachusetts insane asylum. From a literary standpoint, it was a wild pitch from one of the best crime novelists. (George Lang)

Arizona Daily Wildcat:

The influence is certainly there, but you don’t need to be French to enjoy this novel that is as much B-movie as it is Emily Brontë. If this highly-readable, highly-enjoyable mesh of horror and hardboiled sounds up your alley, do yourself the favor of reading it before you see the film; prior knowledge of the jarring conclusion might sour the embedded anxiety. (Brandon Specktor)

About the film adaptation. An interview with screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis and wuthor Dennis Lehane (among others) in The Daily Aztec:

DA: Laeta and Dennis: When you wrote the novel and screenplay, did you envision the same elements of Gothic horror Scorsese added to the movie or was that a surprise to you?
DL: I did really clearly. When I wrote this I felt pigeonholed by a good critical response to my previous book “Mystic River” and I felt for the first time I was being watched and they expect something of me. I’m a contrary in my nature and I said I’m going to give them what they don’t expect: I’m going to write a Gothic, because I’ve always loved them. The critics liked “Mystic River” so I knew I did something wrong. There’s something bourgeoisie if the critics like it. So (this time) only the French are going to get it. I said my influences were going to be high art Gothic over here and low down dirty B movies.
LK: Yes. Much of what I responded to was the Bronte sort of aspects, the Gothic quality to the story telling … So much that spoke to me in the story was the traditional Gothic novel elements from that period of madness, about the wage of sin. (Allie Daugherty)

The Colorado Springs Gazette:

Overwrought and sensationalistic, the pulpy, modern story would not be unrecognizable to Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontë sisters or any writer of Gothic fiction.

EDIT:
Seattle Post-Globe:

He [Martin Scorsese] has definitely come down with a case of multiple director personality disorder. At one point the film looked like a Turner colorized version of Fritz Lang’s “Hangmen Also Die.” That was right after the “Wuthering Heights” cross-dressing as “North by Northwest” sequence. (Bill White)

The Roanoke Times:

Scorsese creates a brooding atmosphere worthy of the Bronte sisters as a hurricane threatens the island -- glowering clouds, crashing waves and wind-torn trees. (Chris Gladden)

Diario Las Américas:

Di Caprio protagoniza a Terry Daniels, un aguacil que investiga el hospital Ashcliffe, situado en una isla en las afueras de Massachussetts y donde se alojan a enfermos mentales peligrosos. Sin embargo, cuando se desata un huracán, la situación se complica eliminando toda forma de comunicación y tanto pacientes como Daniels se ven encerrados en un mundo de terror, con una cinematografía que recuerda a “Cumbres Borrascosas. (Vivian Crucet) (Google translation)

And that's all. For today, anyway.

Another film, and much more Brontë-related at that, is the forthcoming Jane Eyre starring Mia Wasikowska. The Vancouver Sun mentions it in an article about Mia Wasikowska and manages two blunders in a tiny sentence:

And she's set to play Jane Eyre opposite Dame Judi Dench and Michael Fassbender in the film version of Emile Bronte's novel, which begins shooting in March. (Bob Thompson)

Lovely.

Helen Taylor reviews Lyndall Gordon's latest biography, Lives Like Loaded Guns (about a Brontëite, Emily Dickinson), for The Independent and mentions the Brontës in passing:

"Unanswered and unanswerable questions resonate in the wake of lives, and no one more elusive than Emily Dickinson," Lyndall Gordon writes. Women writers of the 19th century who were reclusive, little published in their lifetime, had secret sorrows, and found it hard to leave their fathers' houses, have long fascinated readers. The Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson have all appeared as vulnerable wounded geniuses. The task of recent criticism and biography has been to foreground the intellectual strength, confidence and anger of these writers.

Lyndall Gordon also penned a biography on Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life.

And The Telegraph and Argus reminds us of what happened (or rather: what did not happen) 25 years ago today:

25 years ago: West Yorkshire regeneration chiefs turned down pleas from the vicar of St James’s Church in Thornton for funds to stop the church, where Patrick Bronte was once curate, from falling down.

As for blogs: Wuthering Heights is the subject matter on Life and Times of a "New" New Yorker and Ad Nauseam (in Portuguese). A Bookish Space reviews Jane Eyre. And Desperate Reader posts about The Brontës Went to Woolworths.

Categories: Books, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Wuthering Heights