Zed Cutsinger

This post will have spoilers in it.

I went into Shutter Island, confident with spending $12.50 without reading a review because: I’ve heard the book it’s adapted from is awesome and it’s Scorsese. You know the guy, the director guy who’s good at his directing thing. And if the source material is good, described to me as a “total mindfuck,” fuck my mind, I’m in.

With Shutter Island we delve into the “psychological thriller” genre. In 1954, Leonardo Dicaprio and Mark Ruffalo are on Shutter Island to find a missing patient. Did they escape? Were they helped? The first half of the movie feels mystery-noir-ish. The island is filled with patients who are criminally insane. Nutjobs who have broken the law in a violent manner. The second half of the movie is a…mind-fuck. Conspiracy theories are thrown around, and we, the audience, begin to feel uneased at what is real and what is not. We eventually find out Leo is one of the island’s patients who is so delusional he has forgotten his crimes and the doctors have role play alongside him for two years because reality isn’t where he lives.

The main cast also includes Ben Kingsley (the head doctor) and Michelle Williams (Leo’s dead wife), all of whom do a great job. Whereas in Revolutionary Road Leo’s acting felt overshadowed by Kate Winslet, here, he shines. His third act breakdowns are gut wrenching, they’re heart wrenching. Kingsley plays a normal psychologist who isn’t a cartoon villain trying to cure all patients with sedatives. He feels real. At the end of the movie when he confronts Leo about the fact that he killed his ex-wife and that he wasn’t an FBI agent, he tells him roughly, “If this doesn’t work they are going to lobotomize you.” The anguish in his voice and face is so pure and sad. When Williams eventually drowns all three children, her step into looney town is uncomfortable and genuine feeling.

Scenes such as the time dash backwards to the lakehouse where Leo shoots Williams, wide panning shot of the US troops executing the Nazis under a barrage of bullets, insane zoom in on the car that Leo and Ruffalo board when first boarding the island will be chilled into your memory and will slip into your dreams. Every dream sequence Leo has is fucking beautiful: the Kubrick-esque bloody children with the mom, Williams burning as the room fills with ash…it’s something that wouldn’t have fit in The Departed, but feels perfect in a movie where you can never be sure what is delusion and what is reality. Not that far off from the surreal scenes in Williams’ past acted Synecdoche, New York. Just in terms of disturbing imagery, the Holocaust scenes are a disgust. The Nazi captain who mis-shot his suicide, brains hanging out the side of his head as he twitches…ugh!

I don’t recall the soundtrack being prominent in Shutter Island, but whenever it came in, like the violins in There Will Be Blood, the already uncomfortable scenes were splattered with aural unease. Whereas most movies in this era are filled with doowop and rock ‘n’ roll, there are no musical era influences anywhere to be found on Shutter Island. The movie easily could’ve taken place now, but then they would’ve had to deal with texting and computers, so the nineteen fifties are perfect for an isolated feeling of horror.

I’ve read some “critics” complain that they figured out the “twist” of Shutter Island in the trailer. Well, that’s unfair. If figuring out an explanation of Leo’s delusions for five minutes was predictable, that still leaves over two hours of enjoyable film. When we watch Titanic, we all know the ship is going to sink. But we still enjoy the lead up to the end. In our culture nobody wants a spoiler. Vonnegut would reveal the ending to the reader in the first few pages of his novels, but everybody still read and enjoyed. We need to get over the spoiler. If you want to be surprised so badly, play peek-a-boo with your uncle. My only complaint with now having seen the movie and knowing the ending is that I now want to see it again (spend another $12.50) knowing what Leo (and all the other characters) are going through. It should also be said that I hated The Machinist because of the ending, which was essentially, “It was all a dream!” Even though Leo envisioned unreality on the island, everything else (not in the dreams) did in fact happen. Which makes it more like Fight Club/Sixth Sense in the sense that it’s not a cop out ending.

Let’s discuss the ending, the final scene, which I’ve read some confusion about. After finally being cured, Leo says a line that appears as if he’s fallen back into his state of delusion. Ruffalo’s reaction is that of abrupt disappointment, sadness. He knows this means Leo will be getting the lobotomy. Scorsese so nicely lets us see the doctors with long white napkins in their hands, never showing the scalpels, but we all know they’re hidden there. The final line of the movie, by Leo is, “Live like a monster, or die a good man?” At that point we know the radical treatment worked and that Leo is finally aware of reality. But, he’d rather undergo the lobotomy then live aware of his children’s deaths and the murder of his wife. What an epic ending line!

I’ve heard Wolfman sucks, so see this instead. Shutter Island is the first movie of 2010 that I’ve been stoked on. It’s that good :)