Shutter Island

Me: Knock Knock.

You: Who’s there?

Me: Interrupting Cow.

You: Interrupting Co-

Me: (cutting you off) Mooooooo!

I told this joke to my eight year old nephew Jackson and my buddy Bruce last year. Jackson thought it was funny. Bruce thought it was hysterical and laughed uncontrollably for ten minutes. What conclusions can we draw from this? (1) Bruce has the sophisticated sense of humour of a grade schooler and (2) neither of them had heard this joke before. I can deduce this because if they had heard the joke before it would be nearly impossible to genuinely find it funny. A joke like this can only be funny if you don’t know what the punch line is going to be.

This same principle comes in to play with Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a dark and creepy nod to classic noir films of the past. I should note that there will be some small and big spoilers contained in this posting and the first small one is about to come right now. So if you haven’t seen it and want to see it completely fresh, stop reading right now. Are we good? Okay.

Shutter Island is a psychological thriller that relies on a big twist at the end to deliver its dramatic punch. Many people have written in to Roger Ebert and others like him complaining that this twist was blindsiding and ruined the movie experience for them. I can’t say whether I agree because I feel like Scorsese didn’t do a good enough job disguising the twist. I guessed it four minutes into film. So instead of a gripping engaging thriller, for me it played out like the world’s longest Knock Knock joke I’d heard many times before.

Shutter Island is a film that makes you question the veracity of what you’re seeing the whole time. We are introduced to Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) a U.S. Marshall who, along with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), is dispatched to an asylum for the criminally insane on an Island in Boston Harbour in 1954. They are launching an investigation into the disappearance of one of the patients. Teddy and Chuck have the somewhat limited co-operation of the people in charge of the facility including the head psychiatrist at the facility Dr. Cawley, played impressively by Sir Ben Kingsley. At a time when most of the patients are dealt with through primitive and barbaric treatments like lobotomies and the like, Dr. Cawley is pioneering a bold new program where they bring seriously delusional people back to sanity by indulging their delusions. Cawley and his staff play along, so speak, in the hopes of bringing the patients back to a state of reality.
During Teddy and Chuck’s investigation, we start to see flashbacks to Teddy’s previous war experiences, including one where he is one of the first on the scene at a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. Teddy appears to be suffering from PTSD although nobody would have diagnosed that at the time. This is not the only horrific events Teddy has to deal with. The escaped inmate is a woman who drowned all three of her kids in a lake near her house. This seems to only further trigger’s Teddy psychological trauma as it brings back stronger and more haunting flashbacks.

I think Martin Scorsese deserves a lot of credit for creating the dark and creepy atmosphere that envelops this film. The cinematography is done so everything seems dramatically under lit so much of the action exists in the shadows. This is contrasted nicely with how the film looks after the climax. When you know how the film ends this difference in the look and clarity of the image makes sense. But alas it is in the big reveal where the film falls apart for me.

MAJOR SPOLIER WARNING HERE

I am about to discuss the big twist in Shutter Island. If you don’t want the movie ruined do not read any further. I’m serious…are you ready? Okay.

Leonardo DiCaprio is dreamy and you will get lost in his eyes. Okay, this is not the actual spoiler but I was just testing to see if you would keep reading. Now, for real, here is the spoiler for this movie…proceed at your own risk.

Four minutes into the movie when they first mention that they are going to an asylum for the criminally insane I thought “I’ll bet Leo is one of the inmates” Then when Sir Ben goes to great lengths to explain that his process is to indulge inmates in their delusions I thought “Well there we go”. The woman who killed her children was not a patient but Teddy’s clinically depressed wife whom he killed after the incident. Unable to deal with the realities of what happened Teddy was sent to Shutter island where he lives constantly under the delusions that he is a Marshall again and investigating a big case at the asylum.

After Sir Ben confirmed my suspicions, I spent the remaining 115 minutes with the knowledge of what the big reveal would be. And if I figured it out, I’ll bet there are countless others who did the same.

The fact is that today’s movie-going audiences are more sophisticated than they were 10 or 15 years ago. Shutter Island tries to mine the same territory The Sixth Sense did more than a decade ago. At that time audiences were fooled even though the kid comes right and says “I see dead people only they don’t know there dead”. Today, most people would hear that and think “Bruce Willis is dead”. This is the major failing of Shutter Island. If you are able guess the twist, the movie just can’t deliver the suspense it needs to in order to be successful. What do you end up with instead?

Knock Knock.