Film Review: Shutter Island

Rating: 9/10 (8 October 2010)

Shutter Island, officially released in Feb 2010, is the fourth collaboration of Director Martin Scorsese and movie star Leonardo DiCaprio. Different from their previous gangster movies, this one provides us a fresh style.
The film is adapted from Dennis Lehane's 2003 bestselling novel. The story starts with Teddy Daniels (played by DiCaprio) as a U.S. marshal with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) launching "shutter island", where is an asylum for the criminally insane located on a rocky island in Boston harbor accessible only by ferry, to search for a prisoner, or rather a patient. As they approach, a hurricane sets in. The beginning already set the atmosphere of the movie as mystery, thrill and oppression.
As Teddy continued investigation, we saw that Teddy suspects brain experiments have been done on the patients on the island. We follow the perfect logic of his mind and everything looks reasonable and convincing until the big twist of the ending. It's actually Teddy himself who murdered his insane wife after she had killed their lovely kids. He can't face his guilt and the family tragedy, and then created another himself living in his own fancy world. He is seriously insane. To heal his mental illness, his primary doctor used "group role-play" treatment method and pretended to be "Teddy's partner" - Chuck into his imaginary world. The course of seeking the truth on the island is also the process in which Teddy finds real "himself", his healthy mind.
The original amazing plot was constructed excellently by the film maker team. The characterization was performed brilliantly by DiCaprio showing both muscularity and vulnerability, and by other supporting roles, like Mark Ruffalo and Sir Ben Kingsley. Director Scorsese is very successful in playing around the combination of illusion and reality, making the audiences to see two different versions of story woven in the same movie. This also has us to recall Hitchcockian elements. On the whole, the well-done job demonstrates a worthwhile watching movie for audiences.
Several genres were presented in the trailer. First, the trailer includes the hardboiled fiction and film noir of the 1950s. Next, additional genres of conspiracy theories and psychological thrillers were involved. Each frame shot and designed by Robert Richardson and Dante Ferretti along with music elements conveys the complexities of the human psyche. When Teddy was on his way finding out the truth, the audiences also see his flashbacks, dreams and hallucinations - including the death of his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), in an apartment-building fire and what he witnessed at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp when he was serving as an American soldier during World War II. These seemed confusing at first, but actually are all building up to the climax. People believe or doubt memories sometimes and think dreams must mean something or be a reflection of subconscious. When we look back these details, we now can complete the puzzles, explain the suspense and understand why the protagonist became insane.
Teddy found the truth eventually, but whether to accept the truth and how to face the reality is his free choice given that he mentally returns to normal. The dilemma of "to live as a monster，or to die as a good man" leaves us an open ending as well. Once again, Scorsese and his skillful team show the magic in their work which triggers our deeper thinking.