After months of delay, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island finally opened in theaters last Friday. The film fully explores the psychology of a man who has been driven to manic paranoia. Set during the early 1950s - the post-war McCarthy era - Shutter Island features cultural references to the Red Scare and clandestine CIA operations, which help to reinforce the dark tone.
The movie opens as Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are on board a fog-enshrouded ferry, about to pursue a missing fugitive on Shutter Island. As Aule questions Daniels about the intentions of this search, the audience is already left with similar doubts.
After the ferry's visually-stunning entrance onto the island, prison guards stand waiting, armed to the teeth, projected against images of electric, barbed-wire fences. Daniels is reminded of his part in the liberation of Dachau only years earlier. The audience then is brought into his mind through well-crafted cinematography and editing. Tracking shots and an erratic camera, for instance, help to position the viewer on scene when he arrives at Shutter Island.
After meeting Dr. Cawley, the Ivy League-educated head psychologist on the island played by a well-cast Ben Kingsley, the audience is left with more questions and fewer answers. Cawley becomes only more uncooperative and mysterious as Daniels and Aule press him about the fugitive's past, as well as her whereabouts the night of her escape. Instantly, the chemistry between DiCaprio and Kingsley shines through as the characters argue about the treatment of the "patients," as Cawley refers to the "criminally insane." As the plot thickens and tensions tighten among the three, the audience appreciates each player's acting more and more.
Perhaps the most visually and psychologically riveting moments of this film occurred during the dream sequences. Scorsese and writer Dennis Lehane's attempts to replicate the experience of dreaming through seemingly disconnected images thrown together move from sentimental to highly disturbing within moments, all without seeming forced. The motif of the falling object, whether it be rose petals, ashes or the deportation documents of imprisoned Jews, pervades Daniels' dreams, intertwining the sequences.
In a powerfully disturbing statement about his psyche, Daniels stands before the fugitive he has been searching for, as well as her three children lying dead on the parlor floor. With no holds barred, Scorsese edges into the disturbing to create a riveting exposition of a man's psychological breakdown. DiCaprio's acting holds together well as he morphs from a federal marshal with a clear plan into a maniacal figure grasping for some glimpse of the truth.
Like other Scorsese movies, Shutter Island
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