Movie Review SSJ

Today I would like to talk to you about a high score suspense and brain-burning movie Shutter Island released in 2010. Directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the film is based on Daniel Lehane’s novel of the same name. The film tells the story of a secluded island in Boston Bay, where 66 mental criminals are imprisoned. Under heavy security, a woman who killed three of her own children, Rachel, mysteriously disappears. Federal detectives are sent to the island to investigate, but therefore encountered a lot of dangers and mysteries, and finally the truth is slowly dug out.

When everyone watched the film, the final ending of various places full of puzzled and confused. This is because the director deliberately sets up a double narrative, which makes the truth of the story ambiguous, but also makes it difficult for the audience to make clear which parts of the film are the fact and which are Ted’s fantasy at the first time. There are numerous explanations for the film on various forums, but the two most popular ones are conspiracy theories and therapy theories. But after watching Shutter Island many times, I felt that there was only one ending, and that was the therapy theory.

Arguing this explanation is nothing more than proving whether the hero has a fantasy or not. The first thing we need to realize is that the story takes place in 1954. 1. This is a time when the biological model of psychiatry is at war with the psychoanalytic model of psychiatry. The front line of the debate is fierce, as Dr. Cowley puts it: “It’s a war.” 2. It has been two years since the United States successfully developed a hydrogen bomb.

Next, I will use the details from the movie to explain the ending according to the plot development.

1. The attitude of patients on the island towards Ted is completely different from that of strangers: at the beginning of the story, after Ted and Chuck hand over their guns and enter the hospital, the man sweeping the floor waves kindly to Ted; The old woman who was picking flowers gave Ted a “quiet” sign. It makes me feel like Shutter Island role-play therapy exists, and Ted exists on Shutter Island.

2. Nonexistent Iron Gate Infrared Verification Pass. In the second half of the film, when Ted comes back from the cliff cave, the iron gates are all open and the nameplate reads “Please close the door behind you”, which also proves that the so-called pass does not exist before, but the hospital side is just cooperating with Ted’s fantasy story.

3. Rachel is a woman, but the ward is clearly in a men’s room. And in the investigation, Sean Teti in Rachel’s room to take out two pairs of men’s shoes to Ted to see, the results as a police detective Ted is actually not a bit alert to this. This, apparently, did not fit in with his mental fantasy, and it was what Dr. Narlin later called a “defense mechanism” — to balance his mind by avoiding things that did not fit his fantasy.

4. While the guards were searching for Rachel, they were all trying to find her. No one was looking, they were all sitting lazily on the shore. In this scene, Rachel does not exist at all, but is acting in concert with the patient, Ted.

5. Ted’s dream scene shows his wife’s wet body and blood flowing from her abdomen. Apparently the cause of death is inconsistent with Ted’s earlier claim that he died from arson. It’s the same as when he shot his wife in the abdomen.

6. In the dream, his wife told him not to leave to continue the investigation, and later said you must wake up, I’m not here, you must face the truth. This paradox, in fact, is a struggle between Lettis’s inner split personality.

7. Before interrogating the patient, Mrs. Kearns, a nurse placed in front of her a small medicine cup, a tranquilizer. This is clearly not for Kearns.

8. When Mrs. Kearns is interrogated, she asks Chuck, or Sean, to pour water. When the water poured, the wife drank without a cup in the shot, but in the second shot, she put down an empty cup. Then, when the interrogation was over, the glass was filled with water. Obviously, the previous interrogation had not progressed, and Ted’s mental defense mechanism was activated again, and he began to fantasize in his own direction.

9. Mrs. Kearns grabbed Ted’s book while Sean went to pour water and wrote on the left page. But later, when Ted showed Chuck the word “Run”, it was on the right! It was clearly Ted’s own fantasy plot.

10. The shoeless Rachel escaped unscathed. Faced with Sean’s cue, Ted was still immersed in his fantasy.

11. Entering Ward C and being attacked by a psychopath, he mentions the outside world and asks Ted if he knows about a hydrogen bomb. Ted unthinkingly replies that it’s made of hydrogen. The US successfully tested a hydrogen bomb in 1952. Officers living in 1954 didn’t even know what a hydrogen bomb was. That means Ted has been on Shutter Island for two years, and judging from the interrogation of Mrs. Kearns, Shutter Island doesn’t have a TV, so Lettis — Ted — doesn’t know anything about the outside world and the hydrogen bomb.

12. In talking to George, it can be learned that George knows everything about the matter. That’s why they say she’s dead. Forget about her. It was clear that George wanted him to wake up too, but Lettis continued to ignore him.

13. Rachel in the cave. It would be difficult for a well-trained policeman or soldier to climb this cliff, let alone a woman without shoes. From the beginning of the fantasy assistant falling off a cliff, it is all about the fantasy of the story in my heart.

14. In the lighthouse, Ted shoots Dr. Cawley and imaginations that the bullet opens Cawley, even though it’s a fake gun. That the hero’s fantasy has a long history.

15. When Cawley showed pictures of the three dead children, Ted broke down in tears, his heart aching, but he said, I don’t have any children. The profile depicts Lettis with a split personality and inner struggle. At last he remembered everything.

All the details above point to the fact that the protagonist has mental problems. Ted is just lettis’ escapist, fantasy personality. At the end of the film, Lettis says whether she should live like a monster or be a good person and go to the surgery with the guards after she dies. At this time, Lettis’s disease has been recovered, but still can not bear the burden of memory, so choose to forget everything can also be death!