Customer Reviews

Shutter Island

5 star:		(143)
4 star:		(88)
3 star:		(44)
2 star:		(36)
1 star:		(32)

 

 

I tend to look for movies that draw me in and that provoke an emotional response. Martin Scorcese's "Shutter Island" did indeed draw me in, even though I found the film disturbing. Scorcese explores difficult questions of guilt, personal identity, and mind control.

The movie takes place in 1954 on a craggy, remote and forbidding island off the coast of Boston. (I have some familiarity with a United States possession called Navassa, an uninhabited, little-known island in the Carribean surrounded by steep, inaccessible cliffs and was reminded of Navassa by the movie.) Shutter Island serves as a hospital and prison for the criminally insane operated by the United States government. A United States Marshall, Teddy Daniels, and his ostensible partner, Chuck Aule, who calls Daniels "boss", are ferried to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a female inmate who has apparently escaped. The inmate is said to have drowned her three children before her incarceration. Daniels himself carries with him many emotional issues. He witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp and has had problems with alcohol. His wife died in a fire set by an arsonist. Daniels sought an assignment to Shutter Island because the arsonist and another individual from Daniels' past are incarcerated there, and Daniels wanted to see for himself what was going on.

At the hospital, Daniels meets the head psychiatrist, a bearded, crafty and intelligent individual named Cawley, and his sinister German assistant, Nehring. He meets with staff, with prisoners, both male and female, and with inmates of the "C" ward, used to house the most dangerous prisoners. As the movie progresses, Daniels suffers increasingly from tremors and from hallucinations, most of which are in the form of his dead wife warning him about the island. Daniels also receives warnings and augurs from the patients. He senses that something is not right about the investigation but cannot let it go.

The movie has the makings of a gothic horror film, but it gets beyond that genre by its seriousness and development. The movie builds slowly and inexorably to itconclusion and most parts of the story contribute to the effectiveness of the whole. The feeling of isolation and doom is inescapable, with a mental hospital on a remote island, a hurricane which cuts the Shutter Island off even further from the mainland, and the chilling, hidden natures of staff and inmates on the island.
The movie includes scenes of cliffs and danger on the island, pounding waves, wild rats, a mysterious lighthouse, and lost souls. A difficult and troubled individual, Daniels comes to challenge his understanding of himself in a radical way. I found the confusion in sense of selfhood, in circumstances of isolation and helplessness, chilling.

The movie is based upon a 2003 novel by Dennis Lahane called "Shutter Island" which I have not read. The acting is convincing throughout and the musical background is erie. The movie has received mixed reviews. Scorsese's movies such as "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull" and "Gangs of New York" with their portrayal of violence, illusion, and rawness have always fascinated me. "Shutter Island" did so as well. The movie has attained a large success at the box office, and perhaps can be viewed and responded to on many levels. I don't think it is for the faint at heart.

Robin Friedman

I think that some of the mixed things I'd heard about it come from the fact that some audiences were a) expecting something different and b) don't like to think. To be fair the studio mislead them by selling Shutter Island as a fun, edge of your seat, thrill ride. It's really a psychological drama disguised as a B grade horror movie. It indulges in all the gothic tropes: the isolated mental hospital, the hurricane that cuts everything off from civilization, hints of Nazi experiments, even the music plays into it. But really that's just the setting. If you take it as the whole thing, that's where you'll run into disappointment. It's more about what's happening in the mind of the main character- which is a puzzle in itself- than the big twist ending. I think that The Sixth Sense and others of it's ilk did a disservice to audiences in a sense. People look for the "trick" in movies, studios advertise the "big twist ending". But this isn't a movie about a twist. Yes, there's a big reveal in the end, and the "what" of the reveal is fairly obvious. It's the "how" and the "why" that we should be thinking about. These are the answers to the psychological puzzle of the film. People get so into the "what" after being groomed on twist endings that they forget there is a "how" and a "why". When the big reveal comes it's more about the catharsis, the coming full circle, the emotional confrontation, than the twist itself.

Yes, it can be confusing not to know whether the main character is dreaming or hallucinating, or really seeing what is. But with patience that becomes clear and the beautifully photographed, eerily haunting dream sequences are worth watching without trying to "figure them out". Just enjoy the performances (impressive across the board), the score, the cinematography, and go where the film takes you. Some might call the ending a cop out. But really it leaves audiences with even more questions: are there some things that are so painful that we're better off (literally) cutting them out of our brains? Is a delusional mind a prison or an escape? Who is sane? Is sanity a choice? In my opinion answering these questions would be the cop out!

Shutter Island is a difficult film to review. The way the film unfolds is an interesting one, but is difficult to put into words without spoiling everything from the film. It strings you along so many different paths that guessing how the film ends is nearly impossible. While watching the film, however, nothing really made sense until the last twenty minutes or so. Between Teddy's hallucinations and what's transpiring on the island, it's almost exhausting trying to grasp what's actually happening in the film and what's occuring in Teddy's head. The finale to The Departed, another Martin Scorsese/ Leonardo DiCaprio pairing, was (and still is) one of the most talked about endings when it comes to recent films. Shutter Island doesn't necessarily top The Departed, but is along the same lines. Its ending gives new meaning to at least one repeat viewing of the film.

There's no denying that I've been a fan of Martin Scorsese's films for quite some time. Films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino, and Gangs of New York are prime examples of some of the best films ever. I can't say the same about Leonardo DiCaprio. While I can't argue the fact that I enjoy quite a few films he's been in, he didn't really do anything for me as an actor. I didn't see this potential or charisma that everyone else seemed to. Until now. His work in Shutter Island puts his acting skills on display for the world to see. His devastation towards the end of the film is not only believable, but absorbing as well.

The cinematography is on a level you'd come to expect from a Scorsese picture. The way Ward C, the ward built during the Civil War that contains the island's most dangerous prisoners, is filmed in particular may be the high point as far as cinematography is concerned. The never-ending darkness makes you think something is going to jump out at you at any moment and its metal cage-like structure that constructs the walls feels claustrophobic; like you're a prisoner yourself. That "rat in a maze" line from the trailer really fits the film well. Everything in the lighthouse with the spiral staircase is pretty amazing, as well.

An interesting note about the film is that the soundtrack is used sparingly. I didn't notice one throughout the majority of the film. It seemed to only be used during dramatic moments. There's also a gunshot towards the end of the film that is going to make you jump because it's so damn loud. Seriously. It's insane. For an R-rated Scorsese film, it seemed pretty mild in the language department. The F-word is said 422 times in Casino, 296 times in Goodfellas, and 237 times in The Departed while it's only said a handful of times in this film. Just seemed a bit odd for a Scorsese picture.

Shutter Island is pretty confusing until the finale (basically from "Why are you all wet, baby?" to the end). It's pieced together slowly and is a combination of Teddy's memories, hallucinations, and what's actually occuring in reality. The way it unfolds is kind of like trying to solve a Rubix Cube. It takes time and a little bit of effort, but is well worth it in the end. Shutter Island is a film that makes you think. Remember that going in. Teddy has quite a few lines towards the end of the film that are going to stick with me for a very long time. It's a film that will only get better with repeat viewings. When it's all said and done, it was well worth waiting an extra four months for this film.

It goes without saying that Martin Scorsese is an incredible filmmaker. He has added another classic to his resume with the mind-bending thriller, "Shutter Island". The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a federal marshal who is investigating the disappearance of a patient / prisoner from a mental institution for the criminally insane. DiCaprio shines in his part, perhaps brighter than he has in any other Scorsese film. He is accompanied by Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, Ted Levine and Jackie Earle Haley, amongst others. "Shutter Island" does a great job of playing mind games with the viewer. This film makes for a great DVD to own, because you can watch it as many times as you would like and you can discover new clues in the plot over and over again. Scorsese's direction is excellent, as are all the actors in the picture. The film is a dark noir style and is frightful and tense throughout. Definitely a modern Scorsese classic here, folks. Well worth checking out, multiple times. Highly recommended! 4.5 stars.

Don't listen to the critics. If this movie appeals to you don't miss seeing it. The cinematograpy is beautiful and all the acting good. An island for the worst of the criminally insane and a mystery. What coud be better? Just a delicious movie.

This eerie neo-noir, mystery, madness movie reminds me a bit of Scorsese's other foray into madness, "Taxi Driver." but the hallucinatory nature of Shutter Island is cinematically more interesting to me, although the DeNiro character may be slightly more powerful than DiCaprio.

Having worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health as a psychologist in the 1970's, the authenticity of the settings is amazing (not surprising in that some of it was filmed at Medfield State Hospital where I worked). The brick exteriors and the institutional green interiors brought back some unsettling memories. Although this transpired in a more gloomy period of psychiatric history in the early 50's, where lobotomies were still in fashion and the applications of ECT (aka shock therapy) was almost equally as gruesome.

The delusional world of Teddy Daniels was quite convincing, and extremely well done. The concentration camp sequences, the visions of his wife, the psychiatrist in the cave- psychiatry was very primitive then gave an excellent representation of full blown paranoid schizophrenic. And DiCaprio pulled off this arduous scenario very well. Ben Kingsley was also well cast as the psychiatrist/superintendent, with his aristocratic airs and the pictures of the more grizzly bygone days of psychiatric torture adorning (e. g.screws in the head to let the demons out) his sumptuous abode. Seeing one of the finest actors of all time, Max Van Sydow, of Ingmar Bergman film's fame,as Kingsley's colleague was a real treat.

However, the idea that DiCaprio's law enforcement ordeals where part a vast psychotic psychodrama, initiated by Kingsley, seemed a bit nutty, and pushed the idea that cinema to be effective to the audience requires a "suspension of disbelief" to the limit. Nevertheless the mystery and suspense was excellent, and Scorsese came of looking like Bergman, orchestrating masterful shifts between fantasy and reality. Sure Martin overdid it a bit, on one hand, by having Shutter Island resemble a semi-gothic Alcatraz,and, on the other, having Shutter Island seem not nearly as scary on the inside as Bridgewater State hospital, the Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane, memorialized in Joseph Wiseman's classic, and gruesome, documentary, "Titticut Follies." To reach that level would have required a character like Anthony Hopkins' chilling characterization as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, the gold standard of the criminally insane leading man. The criminally insane patients who, for the most part, seemed remarkably subdued, a symptom of the then new, chemical straight jacket, Thorazine.

Anyway I think the official Amazon reviewer who saw this as one of Scorsese's lesser works is crazy, or at least needs to get his head examined. I think this ranks up with "Taxi Driver" as one of Martin's finest movies. Also, I thought its portrayal of the Bostonian mindset was way better than in The Departed," in which DiCaprio was excellent but, as usual- like in last year's "Revolution Road," not fully appreciated. He won an Oscar as a young, developmentally challenged character, in the second rate "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," However, he will surely be passed over here because a "madman, who's frightening behavior,won't appeal to the pseudo liberal, PC, tastes ("Hurt Locker,"" Milk") of the Academy Award's self congratulatory, aesthetically challenged, voters. Maybe my somewhat scattered review is a bit delusional as well, like one the guard's said: "madness" is contagious in the madnouses, and I certainly did my time as a member of a front line treatment team in my own Shutter Island.

It is in many ways a great film. It questions the "heritage" of the Second World War and the horror the American soldiers discovered in the camps, in this case here Dachau. It is also more than clear on the passage of some of the researchers of Nazi Germany to the US to continue their research in peace, including if necessary with human experiments when dealing with medical research. It is unluckily well-known that prisons and orphanages were places of hellish torturing and violence in the name of research or reform. That's the first level of the film. The second level is: what can society do with the few human beings who are so bad that they can't be reformed? Various solutions are available: lobotomizing them to turn them into docile pets, pharmaceuticalizing their cases so that they become chemical zombies, or manipulating their minds to make them convinced of what they have done and of the necessary punishment called treatment they are receiving. The film goes even as far as imagining the production of human killing tools that could be used in wars. Surgery, drugs or mental manipulation, that's the choices envisaged here. The three of them are all just fully wrong. But the film is a lot more disquieting than that if we deal with the simple fact that the decision of a psychiatrist to classify you as anything psychic or psychological is absolutely irreversible and everything you may say or do to prove you are not will be turned into the evidence that you are and will be used against you. In other words the lady always protests too much. That's the Kafka aspect of the tale. But the film is even better than all that because Scorsese in his personal style builds a story in which we do not know at all at the end if the two cops were really what they pretended to be at the beginning and thus were kidnapped by the doctors to make sure nothing will seep out of their concentration camp, or if it is the doctors who are right at the end and that the two cops are what these doctors pretend, one is a killer and the other his doctor and that the whole tale was a medical procedure to reach treatment. At the end there is only one choice left: to live as a monster or to die in dignity. But what is dignity in such an environment? We are happily doubting everything at the end, which may create a feeling of frustration in the audience.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

The film's visuals, dialogue, music and sound were stunning yet are characterized by offsetting subtleties that the overall effect is rather numbing yet thoroughly thought provoking. It has been several months since I saw this film in the theater but it still lingers with me. A very subtle yet powerful masterpiece from Martin Scorsese.

Martin Scorsese delivers one of the best brain-twisters in film history using old movie techniques like a great story, excellent acting and one heck of a ride. Hitchcock would be proud to tell Martin, "You nailed it." DiCaprio is allowed to be outstanding even in the presence of the greatness of Max Von Sydow and Ben Kingsley as Scorsese effortlessly crafts a thriller with some many dimensions it is breathtaking. Still, Sydow and Kingsley add a dimension of surreality.

Shutter Island is surreal. Leo and Mark Ruffalo (nice work as his sidekick) are Federal Marshalls looking for an escaped mental patient. Ruffalo's downplay of his part again allowed DiCaprio's character to dominate while not dominating. Tough thing to do. Scorsese does it like Hitchcock did. The weirdness blends into the dark island but familiar uses of familiar sets adorns the film like a tight glove.

Is it psychological or mystical? Is it real or not? Who is sane and insane? It ain't Tommy Lee Jones looking for the Fugitive. The Departed (also Martin's creation) was excellent and sucked you in but Shutter Island never lets you leave. After the movie ends, you'll still be on Shutter Island for awhile. The movie opens and closes. Doors slam and open. The ferryman, Scorsese, isn't about to let you leave till you look deep inside yourself. Now, that's why Shutter Island is his finest work to date.

If you love special effects, it ain't here. If you like action, it ain't Iron Man 2 but far more exciting. Shutter Island is like a painting in reverse or a beautiful flower unfolding and withering. Shutter Island, like many like it, is why we have movie screens. Other than Ordinary People, it is the only perfect film. No gimmicks just a story worthy of telling many times over.

Martin is always trying to give you the proper mood depending on the movie. He has done it again. A great film that we all kind of know what is happening but we love to see it thru Martin's eyes. For someone who studies film, we can appreciate this film and what it does to us. It basically gets us dizzy from the start of the movie, and keeps us light headed, because that is the only way to make you enjoy this movie. Why is this Marshall feeling so sick in the boat? Why can't his partner get his gun out the proper way? Why are there so many guards greeting these two officers? Martin gives away the reality in the first 5 minutes of the movie but we become part of Edwards or Andrew's Fantasy and we enjoy every minute of the lie. Will most likely get nominated for an Oscar for director, film, and maybe even actor (if D. Lewis and S. Penn don't make a film in 2010, he might finally get his well earn Oscar, mainly because of Martin) If you did not enjoy it, I can understand, it is not meant for some, the way he directed it might come across as clumsy, but actually that is exactly what Martin wanted. He is no rookie, no one can direct that movie any better. Perfection and always paying respect to other film makers in order to make it even better to watch.