You may know the great and iconic Martin Scorsese for bringing you “Goodfellas.” You may know him for “Wolf of Wall Street.” Or, my favorite, you may know him as the man who directed Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video. Yes, ladies and ghetto-men, he directed that epic battle between prep school, Michael Jackson, and hood booger bully, Wesley Snipes. GOAT-ed but I digress. You know a movie that’s a real sleeper? “Shutter Island” and I had completely forgot about it until the other day.
“Shutter Island” is the story of Deputy US Marshall Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his partner Chuck’s (played by Mark Ruffalo who I forgot was in this movie) journey to find a a missing murderous patient at Ashcliffe Hospital on Shutter Island. Apparently, Rachel Solando drowned her three children and has done the impossible and escaped the facility. Now, while he is investigating this disappearance, Teddy is having nightmares and hallucinations of his own. You see, Teddy’s wife, Delores, died in a fire started by Andrew Laeddis. Lead psychiatrist, John Cawley (played by Ben Kingsley who I also forgot was in this film) doesn’t seem to be much help which leads Teddy to believe the facility is hiding something, and he’s not wrong but it’s the what that he’s got wrong.
What I loved about this film when I first discovered it was that fact that I was confused the entire time. Between his own hallucinations and the events happening around him during his investigation about the facility, I didn’t see what was coming, and what came took me out. Although I was baffled by the ending of the film, I was more concerned with the fact that they allowed this man to run around the facility for two whole days with just Chuck sort of by his side. He wasn’t an intentional murderer but still. He did knock out a guard on his way to the lighthouse, and if you took their bullets, what would happen if there was a real emergency?
Now, for my best friend who would have been in her phone most of the time and those like her, you do have to be paying attention to put some of these pieces together. Though, the ending is quite dense, but I loved the way it came together. It did make me very sad when he regressed in the end. I was hoping he’d be able to move back into society. As a side note, the man didn’t seem to be a danger to society (unless I missed something) so I think he could have just went back to working with this alias. There’s so many small things that you pick up on towards the end of the movie that when you watch it again it feels like a completely different movie. Vary rarely do you encounter such movies.
It’s odd to say that my favorite scene in the film is when Dr. Cawley finally gets him to remember who is really is and what really happened and we get a really disturbing flashback. There is something so beautiful, yet haunting about the dance between DiCaprio and Michelle Williams, who plays Delores.
Does anyone else remember this movie? Did you watch it and think you were on something? Give me your thoughts!
