Shutter Island

Despite the movie change after I had already watched In The Mood for Love, I thoroughly enjoyed Scorsese’s Shutter Island. It was a rollercoaster of a film that kept me on my toes and left me with many questions. Though I may be kind of biased because of my love for Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting, I think this film has probably turned out to be the most thoroughly entertaining one on the syllabus (and there are alot of good ones!)

Like Inglorious Basterds, the history of World War II plays an integral part of the story. Teddie, our main character, was a soldier in the war and is now a U.S. Marshal investigating the escape of a prisoner from the mental facility on Shutter Island. His trauma from the war resurfaces throughout the film, contributing to intense hallucinations and warped details when we see snippets of his past. An instance of this is when Teddy takes the aspirin after he returns from the storm and starts having hallucinations about the missing prisoner (who we later learns represents his wife) and her three children she murdered (that turned out to be his as well). We know that the kids were drowned but in this hallucination we see them and their mother covered in blood. Here we see an important detail of his past unconsciously altered possibly by the violence he witnessed during his time at the liberation of Dachau. During this same scene, Teddy is transported back to those dark times and is tormented by a girl (who we learn is his daughter) pleading for his help. These instances pray upon his mistakes and helplessness in the past; he liberated Dachau but was too late to save everyone and is constantly reminded by the recurring image of a mountain of bodies and he failed to get his wife the help she needed when she was showing signs of manic depression. A mass amount of guilt from the war and his family alter the hallucinations we see. His history in the war contributes to his instability and hurts his credibility in the film as we pick up these inconsistencies.