I’ve seen Shutter Island from start to finish four times now with a few more aborted attempts in the last week or two. Not aborted because of disinterest mind you, just because something else came up and I had to stop the film. Each time, as DiCaprio utters those final, harrowing words to Mark Ruffalo, my brain frantically shuffles to put all the pieces into place, hoping they all fit.
I’ve never thought of Scorsese as an extremely visual director, which might sound odd considering I’m discussing films. What I mean is that I’ve never seen him relying heavily on the visual details to tell his stories. Alot of it comes across in the dialogue and the characters and occasionally in expositional voice over. Not that his films are ugly, not at all, he’s always been great at creating atmosphere, but a lot of that may have to do with the cinematographers he works with as well. Shutter Island is no exception there, it looks fantastic, and the cinematographer was a frequent collaborator of Scorsese’s, Robert Richardson (seriously, he’s one of the best, check out his credits). And Shutter Island, maybe more than any other Scorsese film, depends heavily on the visual to tell its story, because you can’t always believe what you’re being told.
Well, first, before I go spoiling the film, let me say, if you haven’t seen it, do so. I love this movie. It sucks me in like nothing else I’ve seen this year (Okay, MAYBE How to Train Your Dragon) and I think it’s engaging at every turn. And if you have seen it, watch it again. So, from here on out, beware spoilers (for Shutter sland, Fight Club and The Usual Suspects).
Now, unrelaible narration isn’t anything new to film, if anything it’s a a plot device that’s gotten too much play in Hollywood recently. But, in movies like The Usual Suspects and Fight Club it gets used to great effect, and I think this is the first time Scorsese has implemented anything like it. And, like Fincher and Singer, he proves that in the hands of a great director it stops being a simple plot device and becomes a powerful storytelling tool.
There’s been a lot of talk about the ending of the film, with a majority of the people I know and the discussions I’ve read falling somewhere between “I figured it out” and “It was dumb.” I think most of the blame falls on the film’s marketing. When people walk into a theatre on the basis of statement like “You won’t believe the ending,” they’re bound to be a little disappointed when one of the film’s biggest reveals is broadcast pretty early on.
That Teddy Daniels is not right is pretty obvious from the moment we first see him. He’s puking his guts out on a ferry as it makes its way to Shutter Island. When he raises his head out of the sink after washing his face there’s a small, almost unnoticeable piece of special effect; the entire frame morphs, but nothing changes really, it just looks a little off.
But, that’s just the first clue; the guard’s unease around Teddy, the familiarity everyone seems to have with Teddy and Chuck, The way Chuck is constantly studying Teddy as well as his constant looks towards Dr. Cawley. When Cawley recounts Rachel’s story he does so slow and deliberately, waiting to see if Teddy will react to anything he says. And all of that happens in the first twenty minutes, the movie is well over two hours, add in the constant hallucinations and it’s not really a surprise that almost everyone who watched the film caught the “twist” early on.
But, I really don’t think the “twist” was the point, or that Scorsese even cares about it at all. It’s like a magic trick. Yeah, maybe the first time you see it you’re pretty amazed that the man in the tux just pulled a rabbit out of his hat, but that amazement fades pretty fast, usually before he can shuffle the hare off the stage. The trick isn’t the most important part of the show, it’s how he successfully pulls the trick off, that’s the really amazing thing. That’s what’s going to occupy your mind the hours and days after, not the trick itself.
Shutter Island is a film about the limits of the human mind, and more importantly, the influence of guilt on it. Teddy Daniels, or Andrew Laeddis rather, is a man who’s done awful things, awful things that he did for justifiable reasons. His guilt splinters his mind and we’re taken along as his caretakers allow his delusions to play out to their logical end in the hopes that he will see his own way out of the twisted Land of Oz he’s created for himself.
I think the reason I’ve returned to it so many times over the last few weeks isn’t just the sheer craftsmanship of it all. It’s a film that honestly makes me question a number of aspects about my own life. I may not be crazy, but there have been plenty of instances where I knew something was real, I just knew it, specifically in terms of emotions and relationships, only to realize far too late that I’d just wanted to believe it so much that I was fooling myself. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that, we all want to believe we’re on the right side of things, that what we’re feeling is real; we want to be heroes, we want our actions to matter and to make a difference. More often than not we aren’t the people we think we are, people don’t see us the way we see ourselves, and so I guess there’s a little bit of Teddy Daniels in all of us.
