Shutter Island: An Analysis

Martin Scorsese has been trying to find his footing commercially ever since the end of the seventies. His unbelievably positive critical response over the years has made it so he can always find the money to make his next film, and even more he can usually make the film he wants. There are a few examples of him doing “one for them” so he can do one for himself, notably taking Steven Spielberg’s place on Cape Fear in an attempt to make a popcorn picture for Universal after they funded his ill-fated Last Temptation of Christ. However the cult of Scorsese has grown over the past decade with Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed all bringing home $100-million plus, and he now finds himself in a position of critical and financial esteem no director has occupied since Alfred Hitchcock. Which is where an analysis of Shutter Island should begin.

One can read this film as Hitchcockian in the obvious sense that it is a big budget Hollywood suspense-thriller / gothic horror film. That meaning alone does not quite grasp what is meant. This film is Hitchcockian because it has taken the shell that is a blockbuster (complete with a best-selling novel) and filled it with real substance, without compromising the mass appeal element. Scorsese here has truly taken on the mantle of the golden age Hollywood director and smuggled amazing cinema into the cineplexes of the world by making a film that can operate on both levels so effectively. While I will refrain from proclaiming it to be in the same league as Vertigo, however it is the first logical comparison in my mind because of the way such intensely personal themes can be seen between the admittedly bold strokes on the canvas.

The story concerns a United States Marshal, Teddy Daniels, who is tasked with finding an escaped mental patient on an island in Boston harbour where the facility is located. As is the case with gothic horror films, when he gets there nothing is as it seems, and no one on the island seems to be giving him the entire story. As for the escaped patient, Rachel Solondo, we are told she drowned her children and is oblivious to the fact she is in a mental institution. As Teddy continues with the case, it is slowly revealed that he is a man with a troubled past. We are given flashes of his dead wife, and grizzly scenes from the liberation of Dachau, at which he was present. He becomes convinced through the course of the investigation that Shutter Island is the site of brutal experimentation, and nefarious secret government initiatives akin to those he witnessed in Germany. This culminates in a dizzying climax (MAJOR SPOILERS) in which it is revealed he is a patient on Shutter Island, his wife drowned their children, and he has been in a state of delusion concerning his identity for years.

This is a formula picture on the surface, the basic plot, or the major concession of the ending has been used countless times in films of the past twenty years particularly to varying degrees of success. If this twist was given as an end in itself, and the very substance of the film as in a movie like Secret Window I would be disappointed (as I know some were) that Scorsese would attempt such a played out trick. However to him it was a bankable premise, with a bankable ending in which he could riff on themes that have been brewing in his work for years. The first, and most typically Scorsese being the theme of guilt, and punishment, the second only slightly less prevalent in his work; does might make right? These questions are asked throughout the film in its events, as well as through a beautifully structured set of symbols.

Within the first three minutes we are given the major symbols used through the film; fire/smoke, and water. The first line of the film Teddy speaks to himself in the bathroom mirror aboard a ferry, “pull yourself together Teddy, it’s just water, a lot of water”, as he begins to vomit. He splashes some tap water on his face and we see him tense, and upset. In one line, and a simple series of shots water has been established as a source of discomfort. Water will later be linked to the death of his wife, children, and the seeping inevitability of a harsh reality. The next scene sees him on the deck of the ferry with his new partner Chuck. He asks Teddy if he is married. There is a cut to him and his wife at home, a quick cut to a record player, a close up on her face which cuts to a quick shot of a crashing wave connecting her to water in an immediate way. Teddy proceeds to tell how his wife was killed in an apartment fire finishing with, “it was the smoke that got her, not the fire, that’s important. Where are my goddamn cigarettes?”. This line does two things aside from storytelling; it sets up the symbol of smoke/fire as a crutch in the form of cigarettes and the small consolation of the manner of her death, but also as a discomfort because it is connected to her death. By the conclusion we will learn that his wife set the fire in the apartment building, and this was the first concrete evidence that she was unstable. Instead of getting her help Teddy opted to move the family to their cottage in the country, this isolation lead to her complete unhinging, and therefore the drowning of their children in the lake behind the cottage. In this context the fire in Teddy’s everyday life, and delusions becomes a symbol of his self-deception, and self-serving false beliefs. Water conversely, cold reality. These symbols appear too often to even attempt to show, but two prominent instances are:

When Teddy is alone for the first time in the film, it is during a fairly effective scare sequence in which he has to navigate a civil war era prison now housing the most dangerous mental patients. He lights his way with a match, which is a great image in a horror film, but an ineffective way of lighting a cavernous dungeon. The subtext; because he is alone for the first time, he is following his own delusion.

He follows this match-lit hall of horrors to George Noyce, a real world patient who he had recently pummeled, and a central character in his delusion concerning secret government experiments. They have a long conversation concerning the events of the film, Noyce trying to tell him of the truth of the situation but Teddy takes everything he says as a piece of his hallucinatory puzzle.

Note the match between them for the entire conversation, and Teddy is always shot through the bars. Who is the prisoner?

Earlier in the film Teddy is asleep in the dormitory, and has a dream of confronting his wife. Near the end of the dream sequence he is holding his wife who speaks lovingly, but is inconsolable. As he holds her from behind water begins to poor out of her stomach, it turns to blood. They stand together as the water/blood gushes, and she begins to turn to ash in his arms. When he looks down his hands are dripping wet, and the apartment suddenly ablaze.

He wakes suddenly from the nightmare and sits up breathing heavily. He looks down at his hands again, and they are still soaking wet as if the water followed him out of the dream. He looks up and there is a leak in the ceiling dripping on him. The water was real, and it manifested itself in his dream because it could not be ignored. This is an amazing scene because the feeling of something crossing in and out of a dream is universal, but rarely so effectively and simply displayed in cinema. However it is particularly powerful as a metaphor, and signifier of how he is perceiving reality through the film, incorporating elements from reality into his elaborate, private world.

Teddy's feelings of guilt are obviously connected to his failure to seek help for his wife, and therefore endanger his children. The way this manifests itself in his interior world however is centered on his experience in the war, and what he saw at the liberation of the concentration camp. This is a powerful experience in his life, but a safe way of channeling his guilt because it is a shared one in a world he sees as going insane. The first scene in which the supposed crimes of Rachel Solondo are explained to him, he has flashes of concentration camp images. As soon as he is confronted with these thoughts he has to replace them with something else in order to process them. This becomes more explicit later in the film when he has another dream sequence in which he sees the bodies of two holocaust victims replaced with Rachel Solondo, and her daughter (his daughter). As he carries the young girl away, she looks up at him and asks "why didn't you save me?". Piece by piece his mind is allowing him to process the guilt personally.

The Holocaust symbolism is also a doorway leading to arguably the central theme of the film, the idea of violence, how and when it is used, and more importantly how, when, and by whom it is justified. Put simply, does might make right? A story told by Teddy to his 'partner' Chuck about a third into the film concerns his response to, and actions at Dachau. He tells him about finding the commandant bloodied on the floor, having botched a suicide and just letting him die a slow death. He also tells of the American troops lining the German guards up and executing them. "It wasn't war" he says "it was murder". The possibility of him killing anyone during the war is brought into question during the climax, so it is probable that this is also a defence mechanism, and an internal metaphor for the murder of his wife. Punishing someone with violence because they committed an unspeakably violent act. For Teddy this is the only way he can deal with these situations, though he aspires to be morally beyond this he just can't. A doctor played by Max Von Sydow in the film observes that he is a man of violence, not a violent man, this is an interesting distinction because it decribes Teddy perfectly. Someone who does not wish violence, but for whom violence is an option to bring about a solution. The split in his personality between Teddy Daniels (his created second, outstandingly moral identity) and Andrew Laeddis (his true flawed identity) reflects this. He created an identity that represented the moral code he wanted, and a simple dichotomy between him the 'good guy' trying to bring Laeddis the 'bad guy' to justice. Nothing is so easily solved in this film.

The motivation for viloence is expounded upon in many ways throughout the film. The example of Teddy killing his wife is understandable at least, and is made more acceptable in his mind by connecting it to the hot blooded killing of the Nazi soldiers. To view this theme from a different angle the film gives us a scene of Teddy interviewing a patient who had attacked a woman for seemingly no reason. The patient says of the situation, "she asked me for a glass of water, like that's no big deal...it was obvious, she wanted me to pull out my thing so she could laugh at it...she screamed when I cut her. She scared me, what did she expect?", all in a casual tone before going on a xenophobic rant that upsets Teddy. His response to this stimulus, to scratch his pencil in his notebook, and confront the patient in a hostile way about his crimes, sending the patient into a fit before Teddy lunges to scare him.

In this instance Teddy and the audience are faced with a situation in which the reasons for violence are so vauge as to be meaningless, or at the very least so internal as to be incomprehensible. He reacts by attempting to punish him in a subtly violent way, attempting to overcome violence with a more righteous violence. This violence is righteous to Teddy only because of where his point of view. Once again he is punishing others for behavior that is present in himself, he can not see how a viewer outside of his own mind would see him in the same way he sees this patient. The idea of surrendering yourself to violence comes toward the end of the film, in a great speech given by the warden after he picks Teddy up in his jeep. In the conversation the warden proudly says "there is no moral order...there's just this: can my violence conquer yours?". Teddy is trying to overcome the impulse for violence, but his nature and the circumstances never cooperate. When the ride is over the warden asks "if I was to sink my teeth into your eye right now, would you be able to stop me before I blinded you?", Teddy responds defiantly "Give it a try" "That's the spirit" replies the warden. The dilema of violence in the film, and in Teddy's character is summarized in those three lines.

In the end Teddy is brought around to the realization he is Andrew Laeddis by the staff of the institution. He is told that he had broken through to this understanding before only to relapse into his delusions. In the final scene he speaks as if he has done exactly that, and imagines himself continuing the investigation at the cost of a lobotomy. However he throws out the line "this place makes me wonder...which would be worse? To live as a monster, or to die as a good man?". Implying that he is giving in to his guilt over his past, but more importantly his inability to control his own violence in the world, and knowingly accepting his fate. Self punishment for his sins, by resigning himself to the lobotomy. In the end he stays true to his character in the noblest way.

Shutter Island is a masterpiece of sorts. The only major concession I had trouble making to the logic of the film was accepting the idea that there would be such a thing as a "radical cutting edge role play" with a dangerous schitophrenic. Though I suppose we could chalk that up to the film's pulpy appeal if we wanted to be nice. Everything else in the film is note perfect, and any misgivings I had after the first viewing were washed away by the second. The preformances are boosted by the foreknowledge of the ending. Having each preformance read as aloof, creepy and uncooperative on the first viewing is amazing enough, but having it read as tense and infinately patient on the second is truly remarkable.

Ben Kingsley can read as evil ringleader of government mind control initiative, and caring doctor fraying even his own patience to help another person in the same shot dependent on what our perception of the scene is. This is the most amazing feat accomplished by the film, that we see the entire movie through Teddy's eyes. There is no safe distance as in A Beautiful Mind, where halfway through the film we see the events as an impartial observer so the main character can read as insane. We are with Teddy the whole way, even and especially when we don't want to be, when we would like that safe distance to have some solace at the end of the film. There are no happy endings, there is only a brilliant film that stretches the possibilities of filmmaking by creating a perception dependent viewing experience.