Shutter Island

I was really looking forward to seeing Shutter Island after seeing the trailer and it fully lived up to my expectations. I really enjoyed the film and thought the psychological factors behind it were portrayed very well throughout the film.

The beginning storyline leading the viewers to believe that cops, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Di Caprio) and his partner Chuck aretrying to unfold a case on missing patient Rachel Solando, who was institutionalized due to her drowning her three children.

Teddy questions everyone that was in Rachels speech class the day of her disappearance and one of the patients tells Teddy to run, this left me to believe that the mental hospital were keeping the two cops hostage and that they were not going to be able to leave the hospital on shutter island. The film slowly reveals more as it goes on..

After Teddy is told to run he reveals to Chuck his real reason for being on the island. This being to find Andrew Laeddis, the man who murdered his wife who was then referred to the mental hospital.

Teddy bumps into Rachel Solando in a cave near the lighthouse he has been warned against going to previously in the film. She doesn't answer any of his questions but informs him he will never leave the island. This made me think that he was genuinely stuck on the island as well because she reveals that she has nothing wrong with her and is a psychatrist.

Teddy eventually makes it to the lighthouse and finds the owner of the mental hospital waiting at the top for him. He then reveals that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis. I was so drawn in by the rest of the storyline and believed that for some reason or another, Cawley (the manager) was trying to keep Teddy on the island and was trying to make him think he was mental when he infact wasn't, which is what all the acting was portraying. Cawley reveals that he murdered his manic depressive wife after her drowning their three children and created a fantasy where he was a hero making him able to cope with the pain and suffering.

This fantasy included him inventing Rachel Solando. He was under the care of Dr. Sheehan, the man he thought was his cop partner who was infact his doctor for tow years time. Sheehan and Cawley experimented with a roleplay experiment, allowing Teddy to live his life in this way and then attempt to bring him back to reality.

Teddy/Andrews memory comes back and he begins to make peace with his past at the end, but later on loses his memory and believes he is Teddy again. Teddy asks Chuck if he thinks its worse for him to live as a monster or to die as a good man, this leaves the film on a cliffhanger as it is unclear what happens to Teddy in the end as it finishes with an ambigious shot of the lighthouse.

Heres the trailer:



I thought the film was really good and I loved the ending. Although I thought that he was being made to think he was insane when he wasn't, I did earlier think about the fact that perhaps he was a patient as there was a missing patient who his search was after, that patient being Andrew Laeddis, but that was himself. I thought this because I remembered Cawley stating that he treats patients the way they like to believe their lifestyle is like, just as he was treating Teddy the cop.

When the film portrayed the hallucinations, he needed to let go of them to come back to reality. When he blew up Cawleys car before he reached the lighthouse, the visions of his wife and daughter appeared before the car blew up and as it blew up they just stood in front of it. I thought this could be metaphorical of him trying to let them go out of his life as it is what he needed to, but when they aren't affected and didn't disappear after the explosion it made me question why. The film ending can relate to this because although he realises the reality of his situation, he then forgets and goes back to being Teddy. The viewer then assumes that he goes through the same roleplay situation with Chuck and see's his wife and child yet again because of his traumatic experience.

I picked up on a few editing faults during the film which seemed odd, especially the woman with a glass of water in her hand that had then disappeared the next shot, yet her hand was still positioned to be holding the glass of water. Found that a bit strange, but other than that, brilliant film!