'Psycho' (1960) review

Janet Leigh is the Leonardo Dicaprio of “Not Winning Awards for Great Roles”... Not including his win for The Revenant, but you know what I mean. After watching Psycho for the first time in my life, yes, I know… crazy, I took notice that Janet Leigh, who plays Marion Crane, is indeed the main character of the film. However, when I discovered that Leigh was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in her role as Crane, I could only pay attention to the “supporting” part.

Leigh’s Marion Crane should be considered the main character in the film, above Norman Bates. This is due to the fact that her character begins the film and is the sole focus on everyone’s mind. There would be no plot, if Crane did not have a relationship with a man that has debt and want to steal money from her boss to help support him. Crane carries the audience through a journey that ends in her death, but her name remains on the lips of the people that search for her.

The only other character that could be considered the main character of the film, is Norman Bates’ mother, Norma. Although Norma is not alive in the film, her son takes over her identity. Without Norma, there would be no motive or murders. Norman blames his mother for almost everything, talks about her, and even becomes her by the end of the film. Norma becomes the character that is rarely seen, yet holds so much authority over other characters. It is her, or Norman’s imitation of his mother, voice that the audience hears constantly and in the voice-over at the end of the film. The focus is either on Marion Crane or Norma Bates, which goes to show that they are the main characters.

In Psycho, everyone remembers Norman Bates and the iconic shower scene with Marion Crane. However, that scene could not be executed without the subject: Marion. What many viewers have to remember is that the film is about a woman, Marion Crane, who steals money in order to help out her boyfriend. If someone, like me, were to watch the film for the first time, they would be surprised to see that there is way more to the story than a crazy guy dressing up as his mother and killing people who stay in his motel. The story actually follows Marion and the last few days of her life and how she tries really hard to conceal her identity from a suspicious police man and support her boyfriend. The story does not end with her death, but continues when her boyfriend, sister and a private investigator attempt to find her. Even though Janet Leigh will go down in history for portraying a character that is killed off within the first thirty minutes; she will forever be the main character.

'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

'If I Stay' Movie Review (SPOILER FREE)

On July 30th of 2014, I was lucky enough to attend the "If I Stay" tour. At the tour, which was held at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Chicago, I met the lead actress in the film, Chloë Grace Moretz and the author of the book, Gayle Forman. After the meet up and book signing, I had to rush over to the movie theater where an advance screening of the movie was being held. After watching it, a Q&A was held with Moretz and Forman, where they discussed the movie adaption of Forman's book.

I read Gayle Forman’s novel “If I Stay” about six years ago, when it was first published in 2009. At the age of eleven, my three friends and I shared one book and discussed the happy, funny, and sad parts in it. “If I Stay” is about a 17 year old girl, Mia Hall (Moretz) who is an inspiring cellist and has a rocker boyfriend, Adam (Jamie Blackley) who has his own band. It follows her as she deals with the aftermath of a tragic car accident involving her and her family. While she’s in a coma, she has an out-of-body experience. She observes her family and friends in the hospital while she is being treated. As she watches them, her memories flash before her eyes. She realizes that she must come to a decision on whether or not she should wake up and stay with her family and friends or slip further away and die.

The movie was overall one of the best adaptions anyone could ever make of a book. The book alone already had a simple plot, right? No. It actually had a difficult plot. It was hard to keep up with Mia in the present and the past. The movie made it easier to understand. Moretz was dressed in pale colors to create an ethereal appearance and in her flashbacks she dressed in dark, winter colors. The flashbacks offered insight into Mia’s life with her friend, Kim (Liana Liberato), boyfriend, her family and her love for the cello. However, a majority of the movie was focused solely on Mia and her relationship with her boyfriend Adam. The scenes started with how they met, and then continued with their first date, kiss, college decisions, and fight. The on-screen couple was cute and adoring to each other, but made it annoying at some times and to be blunt... boring. The movie was 75% about Mia and Adam and 25% about how Mia felt about her family in the hospital. To compare the book and the movie, Mia (in the book) was extremely worried about her family, especially her younger brother, Teddy (Jakob Davies). In the movie, it appeared that Mia only cared 75% about her boyfriend and 25% about her family, especially her parents.

Music played an important aspect in the film because it was a major factor in Mia’s life; her whole entire being was filled with musical strings. The music in the movie set the tone of an upbeat and moving film, which wasn't exactly the case. The movie wasn't set out to be a melodramatic film about a girl in a coma, but the music made up for that. Adam’s band plus Beethoven might equal a weird combination but it didn't. The soundtrack is without a better word, surprising. Adam is supposed to be a rock god, but he sings pop rock-ish (alternative)? In my opinion, Adam would have been even more perfect if he actually sang hardcore rock music, because I can’t even begin to explain how many times Mia called him a “rocker” or “rock god” in the movie and book.

Jamie Blackley... Adam Wilde... 

Blackley was the perfect Adam because he was Adam. Blackley grabbed Adam by his old, dirty ACDC tee shirt and said “I am going to be you”. That was how good Blackley’s acting was. I praise Blackley, and him alone, because he pulled off a “cheesy role”. Adam is a stereotypical “guy in a band with absentee parents” character. Blackley was able to envelope this character and make it him. So in other words, he gave the impression of a guy with a romantic side, confidence, a soulful voice, hair that isn’t great but not hideous and a tough childhood instead of a stereotypical “guy in a band with absentee parents” character.

“If I Stay” was surprising good, but dull in some parts. It was like my favorite sandwich: peanut butter and Nutella. It looks bad, but it’s actually great. Inside the sandwich, it could have less Nutella and peanut butter in it and it was incredibly gooey, but it’s still good. Moretz's performance showed a side of her the audience doesn't get to see too often: girly and innocent. This film was definitely a good way to flaunt that side of her, but sometimes, we don’t need to see it. She seemed so sweet and innocent, that she came off a little fake. My mother who went to the advance screening with me cried throughout the movie but commented that Moretz wasn't “convincing enough in certain scenes”. But don’t fret, my mother did say that “[Moretz] really looked like she was playing the cello!” and later asked me if she really was. She wasn't.

I give this movie 3½ Jamie Blackleys

There’s still time to see “If I Stay” and read the book! Go right away to your nearest theater or bookstore if you want to see a movie or read a book that will make you laugh, cry and smile all giddy with happiness.