'Shutter Island' review

“Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?”

-Teddy Daniels

In the 2010 film Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it tells the entrancing, yet also very confusing story of a deputy marshal who travels to the titular island to find a deranged woman who escaped the facility, while also trying to find the man that caused a fire, that killed his wife.

The film consists of many flashbacks to Teddy Daniel’s experience during World War II, his wife Dolores, hallucinations of dead children and memories of events that affects Teddy in a drastic way. Shutter Island shares many qualities with another film noir, Memento, that was released only 10 years prior. They both deal with a main character who tries to repress memories that involve the death of their wife. One of the main things that the film is controversial for, is the ending and how it is interpreted. I might be echoing a lot of things that other people have already mentioned in their own analysis, but I have my own theory of what really happened at the end.

Although the end of Shutter Island is open-ended and does not immediately reveal what really happens and if Teddy is mentally ill and imagining everything or are the men that work there and everyone else against him? When the audience has their first glance at Teddy, he is in a bathroom on a boat, and is sea sick. He looks at the mirror in front of him and tells himself to get over it and to calm down. It becomes quite obvious at this point that something about water, not sea sickness, is the main factor that bothers him. He explains to his new partner, Chuck Aule, that being on the sea felt like it was surrounding him and suffocating him. The mirror scene reminds me so much of another famous Martin Scorsese film… any guesses? Taxi Driver. Actually, Scorsese uses this motif in almost every single one of his films (watch them and you’ll see).

When Scorsese uses the motif of the main character talking to himself in the mirror, it usually means that he is trying to connect with reality or make sure that he is there. This idea of a moment being real and fictional is played out often in his films because in Taxi Driver, Travis talks to himself, making it appear that he is a tough guy, even though he isn’t. He uses the persona of someone else to keep him at ease, which is exactly what Teddy is doing in Shutter Island. A line that the lead psychiatrist, Dr. John Cawley says in the film is “Sanity's not a choice, Marshall. You can't just choose to get over it” which goes along with how Teddy is dealing with his situation.

At the end, it is determined that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, the man who he claimed killed his wife in a fire. However Teddy is the one who killed his wife, by shooting her after she drowned and killed their children. There are many other things that are revealed to the audience, and let me be clear: they make sense. Though, what bothers me are the unanswered questions. Such as, what is real and what are memories? Teddy is publicly known to be an unreliable character at the end, because of the revelation that he is mentally ill and projected his inner feelings onto someone else and create a lie about how his wife was killed. Though, with Memento, I pity the main character and am on “his side” in Shutter Island. Both Leonard and Teddy kill their wives and project the experience onto someone else, because they are unable to come to terms with what they have done. They both love their wives so much and they did what they had to do, but it does not mean that they enjoyed it, because it took a major toll on them and it brought them to a never-ending cycle where they are hopeless and are desperately trying to make themselves sane. George Noyce, another patient at the asylum, whom Teddy knows from a previous work related situation, confronts him and tells him something that the audience most likely overlooked because George was the one in the mental institution and not Teddy, who was the one investigating, “This is a game. All of this is for you. You're not investigating anything. You're a fucking rat in a maze.” When this line is said and it is connected to everything Teddy is told at the conclusion, it becomes known that he is not really trying to find anything, but he is trying to forget something and bury it deep in his mind.

So when Teddy appears to “relapse” and I write that in quotation marks, because I personally believe that he is finally at a stage in which he knows that he is mentally ill and that he knows everything that is going on; he comes to the realization that he is done pretending. Teddy retreating back to his old ways, allows him to commit suicide (in a way), even though he knows what is real, he cannot truly accept the fact that he killed his wife. The look he gives Chuck Aule, is a strange one, when he says, “Which would be worse: to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?” indicates that he knows what is happening, and that he is okay with it. He is okay with dying, as a clueless, sad man who lost his wife, who is a good man… instead of dying as a monster who killed his wife and did not save his children from being murdered by their mother because he was a drunk. He is also the same man that may or may not have killed thousands of people in the second World War.

There are some instances in which the audience is not sure if it is “just my own imagination” or was it an editing error? The audience, like in Taxi Driver and Memento, are experiencing everything through the main character, so when things happen out of the blue, it seems out of place. Such as, when Teddy arrives on the island and the security guards are very on edge and intense, because a madwoman is on the loose, though when they are later shown, they appear to be bored and just sitting around. No one gives Teddy a straight answer or seem to be very interested in finding the missing patient. When Teddy interviews a patient, she reaches out for a glass of water, and there is nothing there. However, when she is shown again, the glass appears in her hand as she sets it down. I’m not sure if it was an editing mistake or something wrong with the continuity, but when it comes to Martin Scorsese and his films, nothing done without a reason. This editing technique shows that Teddy might not be functioning correctly and that he is already off balance with reality. He is already seeing hallucinations, so this plays along with that idea as well.

What Martin Scorsese perfects, once again, in Shutter Island is the use of motifs. However, his frequent use of characters talking to themselves will only set me off, the next time I watch another one of his films. I will now, forever, connect that image with the character having a split personality or fearing reality. Much like his other films, Teddy exits the movie as a hero. Though, how he becomes a hero is questionable.

Shutter Island

Shot Her Island

'Memento' review

“We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are.”

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) says this line in the 2000 film Memento directed by Christopher Nolan. In the film, a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia goes on a mission to find the man that raped and killed his wife. The only things that he remembers, is his life before the accident and his wife. The idea for Memento came from Christopher Nolan’s brother Jonathan, who wrote a short story called “Memento Mori” about a man who has short term memory and uses polaroids and tattoos to help him figure out who raped and killed his wife, which is much like the film.

When watching the film for the first time, it is obviously very confusing. There are two different things going on: the scenes that are in black and white are in chronological order (but is in the past) and the scenes that are in color are in reverse order (but is in the present). After watching Memento, I read an article “Everything You Wanted to Know About ‘Memento’” by a film critic, Andy Klein, who dissected everything in the film and made it so much easier to understand. He basically created a way to watch the film in its right order. He explained that when watching the movie, to watch the black and white scenes in  chronological order, but to list every scene 1 through 21. However, there is a “special” scene at the end of the film, where it starts off in black and white, but transitions into color; this specific scene would be 22/A. Then, the color scenes would have to be watched in reverse order, or backwards, and those scenes would be B through V. In all, the complete order of how the film would be viewed, in a chronological order, would be:
1, 2, 3 ,4 ,5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22/A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V.

One of the main themes for the film is memory. The entire film consists of the idea of whether or not Leonard, the main character, is searching for the right man who killed his wife or not. For starters, Leonard is an unreliable narrator because of his short term memory, the audience is unable to determine if his memories and his flashbacks are real or if they are fabricated. What is clever about this film is that the director, Christopher Nolan, has a man who is damaged and his short term memory is his weakness. Leonard is easily deceived by people who learn of his “condition” and they use it to their advantage, like Natalie, who has him kill her boyfriend’s drug dealer boss. Natalie and her manipulative ways definitely makes her the film’s femme fatale because she seduces Leonard and makes him trust her, only for her to use him in the end and have him kill someone for her. There are other film noir characteristics that fit with other characters, like Teddy, who resembles a rogue cop. The audience does not find out that Teddy is a cop and is the one who Leonard has been giving information to one the phone, until towards the end of the film. Teddy is taking advantage of Leonard as well, he helped him find the guy who got away from the assault, but because Leonard does not remember, he uses him to kill other men and collects money from them. This leaves Leonard… who is he? I came to the conclusion that Leonard is a homme fatale, because he is an attractive man, who is going through a rough time in his life and he can’t make any sense of what is really going on, but he is very determined and sticks to his mission.

The use of voice-over is an important device in the film as well because there are also two different types of it. For the black and white scenes, Leonard’s voice-over is more like him being interviewed, which in many cases, he already is because of the phone call that he has. The audience and Leonard are unaware, until the end of the film, of who is on the other line. The voice-over for the color scenes are more investigative, because he is trying to figure things out in his mind, as they are happening. His voice-over is his inner thoughts. The color scenes are probably my favorite ones, because the audience is just as clueless as Leonard is and we are both trying to figure out what is happening and we both get frustrated when he forgets. What Leonard knows, is what the viewers know.

The ending of the film might come as a shock for many people, but there are little clues throughout the film. One of the major clues is the “Remember Sammy Jankis” tattoo on his hand. This was most likely a way for Leonard to remember who he really is, the person that reminds him most of himself. He created Sammy to repress his guilt over accidentally killing his wife. Not only is Leonard being used by people in the film, but he, himself, is using a fictional person to carry the weight of his issue.

When Leonard remarks, “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are” I believe that this means that he needs to be reminded of who he is, because he doesn’t really know himself. When Teddy asks him if he knows who he (Leonard) is, he goes on to recite real facts, but Teddy wants him to know “what he has become” which is something that Leonard will not know, and probably will never know. He is on a never-ending tunnel that leads him to kill men with the name John G. and his mission to avenge his wife’s death, becomes meaningless.

One of the last lines that Leonard says at the end of the film is, “Do I lie to myself to make myself happy?” It is one of my favorite quotes because it is something that I think everyone can relate to. The line itself is pitiful and makes the viewer feel somewhat bad for Leonard, but then you remember all the things he’s done, and you don’t feel so bad anymore. He can’t help that he has a condition and this bothers him. So when he finally learns the truth, he chooses to ignore it, because at this point in his life, he is not living his life for himself but for his dead wife. His only goal is to repeatedly get vengeance. This connects with everyone else in the world, because with little things such as makeup and cosmetics, help women feel confident and beautiful. We make up excuses and lies to help us with daily life situations. Is it a good thing? No. Though we choose to do it anyway.