Shutter Island (2010)

Through a fierce storm, a boat heads toward a remote island. On that island stands a hospital that confines the mentally ill who have committed violent crimes. From this gloomy opening, Shutter Island slowly crumbles the ground beneath the audience’s feet. The unease that makes you unable to be certain, until the film ends, what is truth and what is hallucination is the work’s true engine.

What it’s about — A remote-island asylum and a vanished patient

U.S. Marshal Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio), together with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), heads to a psychiatric hospital on a remote island. They are there to investigate the case of a female patient who has vanished without a trace. But the hospital seems to hide something even as it pretends to cooperate, and Teddy himself is ceaselessly tormented by memories of the war and visions of his dead wife. The deeper the investigation goes, the more he becomes gripped by the suspicion that the whole island is woven into a vast conspiracy. Following his gaze, the film drags the audience, too, into a labyrinth where it is impossible to know what to believe.

Direction — A design that becomes an entirely different film on rewatch

Scorsese handles the grammar of genre cinema deftly while twisting it in his own way. The color so deep it feels artificial and the exaggerated music seem awkward at first, but they gain meaning as it emerges that all of this is a device reflecting Teddy’s unstable inner state. Rain-streaked windows, flickering lights, and subtly off-kilter editing blur the boundary between reality and hallucination. The director hides clues throughout the frame yet never kindly explains them. So once you know the ending and watch again, an entirely different film unfolds. This intricate double structure makes the work impossible to watch only once.

Performance — An ensemble that seems to know only part of the truth

DiCaprio densely renders the inner life of a man gradually breaking down. Teddy, who at first appears a cool investigator, is consumed by visions and memories until he wavers, and DiCaprio persuades us of this through gaze and breath alone. The restrained sorrow he shows in the scenes facing his dead wife’s vision, in particular, holds up this film’s emotional weight. Mark Ruffalo calmly plays the partner Chuck, planting throughout subtle expressions that read newly on a second viewing. Ben Kingsley sustains tension throughout as the inscrutable hospital director, and Michelle Williams leaves a powerful impression with only a brief appearance. The old doctor played by Max von Sydow, too, adds an ominous menace in just a few scenes. Because the actors each play as if they know only part of the truth, the whole film feels like a vast riddle. The shock, when that unease of being unable to fully believe anyone is finally assembled into a single picture at the end, is all the greater.

What the film says — To live carrying the truth or to forget it

Shutter Island is, in the end, a story about the courage to face the truth. Faced with pain they cannot bear, human beings sometimes invent a different reality for themselves. The film digs all the way down into how solid and how precarious that defense mechanism is. The single line Teddy throws out at the end leaves the weighty question of whether to live on carrying the truth even while knowing it, or to remain within forgetting. Its resonance is far too deep to be consumed as a simple twist film.

Ratings & reception

This work’s reputation has actually risen over time. The IMDb rating is a fairly high 8.2, the Rotten Tomatoes freshness score is 69 percent, and the Metacritic score is 63. Upon release some critics responded somewhat stingily to the twist ending, but reappraisal followed and it came to be counted among Scorsese’s representative works. The fact that new meaning emerges the more you watch is the greatest reason for that reappraisal.

Verdict

Shutter Island is not a film consumed by a single twist. Even once you know the ending, its intricate design and DiCaprio’s performance remain intense, and its true worth in fact emerges on a second viewing. Some passages feel somewhat long and expository, but the tenacity with which this work persistently gazes into the dark abyss of the human psyche more than earns four stars.

Recommended for

• Those seeking a film that is fun to rewatch once you know the ending
• Those who love mysteries with dense psychological portraiture
• Those who want to see DiCaprio’s deep performance