A trick of the mind

Rating: 9/10 (31 July 2010)

Shutter Island is essentially two films in one. The story starts with Teddy and his partner 'Chuck' investigating the disappearance of Rachel Solando, who has escaped from her cell. After the first viewing, the audience are under the impression that the staff at the mental institute are the 'bad guys' and that Teddy is trying to undercover something sinister. The film begins like a horror film with the chilling and dramatic music that booms during their arrival at the Institute. The tension increases with the ferocious storm that is seemingly holding Teddy captive. When Teddy first arrives, it seems he has an aggressive stance in his conversations with the professors and they note his excellent 'defence mechanisms'. However at the same time there is an underlying current that something is being held back from Teddy and that he is actually under the microscope himself.
As the film progresses, we learn that Teddy has a turbulent past. He suffers from regular flashbacks to scenes from the Holocaust as well as flashbacks involving his late wife, who apparently died in an arson attack. His subconscious is peppered with feelings of guilt and regret as he is faced with piles of corpses and an execution style scene. Teddy soon begins to start his own investigation as he suspects that the man responsible for his wife's death is a patient at the institute. However he is suddenly struck down by a series of mysterious migraines. The viewer is led to believe that the professor is drugging Teddy as he apparently administers him aspirin for his pain.
Teddy's world quickly becomes more distorted as he begins to have hallucinations of his dead wife, urging him to kill the man who set their apartment alight. The film explores his heightened levels of paranoia as he feels that everybody on the island is plotting against him, even his own trusted partner. The twist at the end is truly gut-wrenching and you really feel the utter sense of bewilderment for Teddy as his current existence is shown to be total fabrication and that the 'bad guys' are playing along in his fantasy world. This is only film your see where you will feel absolutely compelled to watch it again almost immediately so that you can see the true reality and not the one that Teddy has created.
This film also makes some interesting observations about mental illness and the lack of understanding about people who reside in these institutions.A film like this demonstrates that the mind can have a distorted interpretation of situations if presented in a certain way. Therefore Shutter Island actually performs a trick of the mind, where the viewer can relate to Teddy's utter confusion and feel like they're going insane themselves. This begs the question to whether seemingly 'normal' people all have a tendency for insanity if the right buttons are pressed?