Shutter Island

In a remote psychiatric facility on an island, two police officers must find the whereabouts of Rachel Solando, a violent inmate who has disappeared from her cell. The atmosphere in the hostile prison and a storm outside underlines the sense of confinement. The double whistle of a ferry is the only communication with the outside world.

The film begins in the middle of a scene in which the two protagonists are introduced: quickly, we learn that one of them suffers from hydrophobia and has vivid nightmares. This is Edward Daniels (Leonard DiCaprio), who also keeps track of the murderer of his wife, Andrew Laeddis, in the so intimidating labyrinths of the prison. The other agent is Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), whose life we know less about, but we'll know the essentials.

The disconnection with the rest of the world and the relationship with the water get quickly relevance in the story. Very soon we know a disturbing dream of the protagonist, where we see him embracing his wife, begging him not to go in a burning room with charred fragments hanging around, but both covered in water and more water in her that gets blood stained. The fire is due to her death in a fire some years before, as he explained to Chuck, but the water only serves to confuse things.

In addition to the storm and the ocean, to which several shots are dedicated, the water feature continues in contexts that cannot be referred to into this review to avoid spoiling.

It can be noted, however, that it serves as a connection (as the shower that opens in angle shot in Psycho) and that after the storm the films keeps its picture somehow “washed”. To these regards, the very little saturated colors used mainly in Daniels' dreams create a strong photographic with the high saturation of the colors in the rest of the movie.

Although there are other elements to distinguish very clearly wake and dream states, these differences are fundamental to identify the illusions, which, as in Hitchcocks' film, go beyond telling us about the characters.

Based on the above pillars, the most important achievement of the film is to develop a narrative that shelters several possible readings and earns the right to make anagrams of one of its central elements.

Indeed, the narrative details of the work are well tuned: this helps to make high-quality cinematography and q staging that seems a homage to the mystery films of 50’s.

However, "Shutter Island" also has some narrative difficulties that can lead to loose the interest of viewers: this is due to the narrative tempo, slow and repetitive, which initially gives excellent results while carrying high levels of stress, but with time looses some of its intensity.

"Shutter Island" is a decent film, with an extraordinary performance by Di Caprio, who shows here to have largely outgrown his Golden Globe Winning -self from the Aviator. 

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), Dennis Lehane (novel)

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer and Mark Ruffalo