In 1954, a U.S. Marshal investigates the disappearance of a murderer who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane.
It was my first time watching “Shutter Island,” despite its release 10 years ago, but getting to watch a revamped ten-year-old movie elevates cheesy camera transitions and dramatic soundtrack styles to its greatest potential quality. The sharpness of the portrait mode enhances the visually disturbing images of the mental patients and the excessively suspenseful music succeeds as intended at making my heart thrum with nervousness.
“Shutter Island” hosts Ashecliffe hospital, a mental institution off the shore of Boston Harbor. Leonardo DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, a military official sent to Shutter Island with his partner, Chuck Aule played by Mark Ruffalo, in an attempt to recover a lost patient at the mental ward. (SPOILER ALERT ahead!) However, the realization that U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient in Ward C of Ashecliffe Hospital and a widow with a heart-wrenching backstory, stunned my brain into overdrive. I couldn’t help but revisit the memory of the movie, trying to understand the elements of foreshadowing I noticed but couldn’t piece together until the final reveal.
An element of foreshadowing that really struck me was the usage of the elements, water and fire, throughout the film. Due to Andrew Laeddis’ aversion to water after the drowning of his kids, water is vilified in his presence despite its naturally soothing entity. The movie opens with Teddy experiencing a severe case of seasickness, initially thought to be due to motion instead of the water. Subsequently, each storm or ocean waves panned into screen etched fear onto Laeddis’ expression as well as water droplets from the rain triggered him into night terrors. His aversion to water is so severe that he fails to register a cup of water in a patient’s hand in one moment, but is able to register an empty cup once all the water was consumed.
On the other hand, fire is used as a source of comfort for Laeddis as shown when he relies on the matches to light up the darkness of the wards. Laeddis used fire to create the alternate reality in which his wife was killed and thus it became the polar opposition to the water that he was suppressing in his mind.
“Shutter Island” stars many familiar faces – actors who have grown in their practice over the last ten years – that trigger the audiences’ and their nostalgia receptors at the fascination of seeing a younger version of current iconic actors.
Leonardo DiCaprio gives a stunning performance of a naïve military officer revealed to be a mental patient, ruined by the inability to accept the reality in which he murders his wife for drowning their three children. Rather than faltering from the weight of complexity in his characters, DiCaprio has the audience commiserating over his tragedy. Initially, his lack of empathy towards the mental patients contributed to the eerie plot of the film. Over time, it was no longer his demeanor, but his actions and flashbacks that triggered a feeling in my gut where not everything is at it seems. The only comfort I found throughout my feelings of uneasiness was Mark Ruffalo’s calm and logical demeanor amongst individuals stifled by their own mental baggage.
“Shutter Island” is a powerful reminder that mental health disorders and diseases are not an excuse to treat an individual with hate or apathy. Those struggling with pain in the mind requires more empathy from the heart of others to have healing, as gradual as it takes. In the end, it is the characters of Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) who deserve applause for their resilience and hope for Laeddis to recover from his delusions. It is not pity that they offer, but tenderness that eventually saves Laeddis’ sanity.
“Which would be worse? To live as a monster or to die as a good man?” asks Laeddis in his final scene of the film. Rather than answering that question, I find that it is important to recognize that it is the people that you are surrounded by who can set off a chain reaction redeeming a monster into a good man or condemning a good man into a monster.
Available on 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo February 11th
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