Shutter Island

Shutter Island is a captivating film about a mental patient who doesn’t even know that he’s in a facility. He plays out an elaborate role play as a U.S Marshall (Teddy Daniels)trying to find and escaped mental patient. The whole idea of him finding her is staged by his doctors trying to make him realize that he is a mental facility. Martin Scorsese did an excellent job directing this film. The mise en scene also brought the whole feeling of the movie together. Between the outfits that the Marshalls were wearing(Teddy and Chuck) and the old feeling of the A,B, and C blocks, it really felt like a throwback to the 1950s. The old civil war fort that was used as C block was done especially well. The scene wear Teddy talks to George Noyce was very eerie. The score was creepy as well as the lighting used. There were deep shadows mixed with Teddy hallucinating his dead wife. In my opinion, the whole feel of the film was very creepy and mysterious. Towards the end of the film, we find out that Teddy is actually the mental patient and has been at Ashecliffe for two years. His actual name is Andrew Laeddis and he killed his wife because she killed their three children. This shocked me because he was played out to be the main protagonist throughout the film and we find out that he actually had a very traumatic and dark past. We were led to believe that Teddy didn’t kill his wife and that Andrew Laeddis(who is actually him) burned his house down and killed her. We find out that it was actually Teddy(Andrew) and that he covered up his memories with an alter ego. It was nearly impossible for Andrew to admit that he killed his wife and it felt like he was still the good guy at the end of the film. I believe it was done very well and i really enjoyed this film.