‘Shutter Island’ leaves one critic stumped, one wanting more

Caitlin Whittington

I like it when I can figure out a movie pretty early on, especially mysteries or psychological thrillers. 

Being a writer makes me very observant. And I mean, I did grow up reading “Nancy Drew.”
But Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” got me. And it got me good.

Set in Boston Harbor 1954, “Shutter Island” follows U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he investigates the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliffe asylum, a hospital for the criminally insane.

As Teddy’s investigation moves along, he notices the staff, especially Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), not complying with the protocol of his inquiry and all things point to him never leaving the island himself.

The New York Times said “Shutter Island” was full of red herrings.

I never picked up on any of them, which made the twisted ending that much more mind-blowing.

Teddy also has his own terrors.

There are several moments where the investigation sends him into flashbacks of WWII or his dead wife.

As always, Scorsese does not disappoint. 

With sound alone, he conjures an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear.

His scenes linger and are full of sweeping, cacophonous musical passages and a sense of heightened sound effects that emulate Hitchcock’s thrilling climaxes.

At times, such as with the flashback to the disturbing and gruesome liberation of  the concentation camp in Dachau, Polland, all we hear is the irregular tinkering of a piano.
Scorsese’s film is a cunning and brilliant thriller.

He hits you with a twisted ending that I’m still trying to piece together, and it’s driving me insane.

It’s so open-ended, but throughout the movie, you’re constantly guessing at the reality that funnels down to one thought-provoking question.

Scorsese appears to give the answer, yet the final, haunting scene is ambiguous.
At one point in the film Teddy says, “You act like insanity is catching.”

Watch “Shutter Island,” and you’re apt to think so yourself.

Caitlin Whittington is an English graduate student whose life is nothing like the movies. It is magnificently better.

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Travis Cowan

In his first major U.S. release since 2006’s Best Picture winner “The Departed,” director Martin Scorsese crafts a beautiful, if somewhat predictable, thriller in “Shutter Island.”

The film follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) onto a small island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Shutter Island is home to a high-security mental asylum that contains the most dangerous mental patients in the country.

One of Shutter Island’s 66 patients, Rachel Solando, has gone missing and Daniels–accompanied by his partner Chuck Alue (Mark Ruffalo)–must find her.

But as the marshalls begin asking questions, Dr. Crawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), Shutter Island’s chief doctors, are not keen to answer, and the marshalls find themselves in danger of never escaping the asylum.

It may be odd to state my favorite part of “Shutter Island” didn’t actually take place on the island for which the film is named.

Throughout the film, Teddy Daniels has flashbacks of when he helped liberate the concentration camp in Dachau, Poland.

These scenes steal the film with their disturbingly beautiful cinematography and hyper-realized accuracy of the horrors of the Holocaust.

However, the movie’s other fantastical dreamscapes did leave me wanting slightly more.

In particular, one special effect involving a burnt body was so poorly integrated with the actor, it pulled me completely out of the experience of the film. 

Jackie Earl Haley has a small part as the wrongly committed patient, George Noyce.

Haley transforms into the battered Noyce, further showing his acting prowess since his post-“Little Children” resurrection.

Despite my minor aesthetic gripes, “Shutter Island” is a great return to the thriller genre Scorsese has not occupied since 1991’s “Cape Fear.” And it is shamefully too late for this year’s Oscar season.

Travis Cowan is a junior communication  major who dreams of being a legitimate newspaper man at “The Onion.”