Ingenious Portrayal of a Rare Psychiatric Disorder

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2010)

I am not a psychiatrist, but I think the Mr. Scorcese and Mr. DeCaprio have put on the screen a remarkable story of personality change resulting from denial. Today's shrinks might scoff at what the doctors were trying to accomplish, but remember that Shutter Island is fiction and set in the early 1950s, a time of much less sophistication in mental disorders and treatment. The way this film moves from reality to the unreal as the DeCaprio role requires is a magical bit of film making. There apparently is a lot of ambiguity for some, but after the viewing and the surprising and dramatic conclusion, I found that the picture didn't miss a beat in confirming that the patient, DeCaprio was brought from prison two years ago to the mental hospital for an experiment in treatment of one who had lost connection with reality because of the trauma and consequences of past violence on his wife and perhaps others within the walls of his prison. The experiment ends in failure as he's led from the hospital, to he boat and back to internment in prison, still a prisoner of his mental state. Congratulations to the director and Leonardo DeCaprio for a fine and thought provoking movie.