(2010) "Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?"

In 1954 federal marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, whom he's just met, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), arrive by ferry at the mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island in Boston harbor. Sick to his stomach from seasickness and unable to find his pack of cigarettes, Teddy - grieving for his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams), who died two years earlier in a fire - volunteered for this assignment to find a missing prisoner because he believes Andrew Laeddis, the arsonist responsible for setting his apartment aflame, is on the island.

Referring to the inmates as "patients" rather than "prisoners," Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley) explains to the lawmen (who have surrendered their guns upon entrance to the facility) that Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson), a mother who murdered her three children by drowning them, inexplicably vanished from her cell the previous evening. Along with both her pairs of shoes, the feds find a hidden message in Rachel's handwriting: "The law of 4. Who is 67?"

The first clue to the denouement appears as stubble on Teddy's chin and upper lip. (In the '50s, would a US marshal have gone about without being clean shaven?) Curiously Rachel's primary psychiatrist, Dr Sheehan, departed the island on vacation just before Teddy and Chuck's arrival; a hurricane severs all communications with the mainland.

Suffering from hallucinations - Dolores, offering advice and warnings, visits him - and nightmares - he had been among the American soldiers who liberated Dachau - Teddy also relies on information from George Noyce, a former prisoner/patient, he'd found locked up for life in the state penitentiary, preferring that sentence to being sent back to Shutter Island. According to Noyce, prisoners were being subjected to mental experiments and brain surgery to create unfeeling creatures, not unlike what the Nazis did to inmates in the concentration camps; Teddy now suspects that Dr Naehring (Max von Sydow) is involved in these horrendous abuses.

Teddy tells Chuck of the connections he's discovered with Nazis, communists, the House on Un-American Activities, and the mental hospital. The point of view is consistently Teddy's in director Martin Scorsese's suspenseful horror film (though it's not particularly scary), adapted by screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis from Dennis Lehane's novel. Music supervisor Robbie Robertson has assembled a fascinating aural accompaniment to the drama, including contemporary compositions by John Adams, Brian Eno, Max Richter, Krzysztof Penderecki, Györgi Ligeti, and John Cage.

The warden (Ted Levine) expresses camaraderie with Teddy, saying of the damage from the storm and their own natures that God's gift is violence. Inside ward C for the most dangerous patient/prisoners (apart from the men and women's wards) Teddy finds Noyce naked inside his cell: "Don't you get it? You're a rat in a maze."

Initially my impression following the unexpected conclusion was of strange disappointment. Upon further reflection, I realized that I was reacting unreasonably to having been completely baffled by a very clever setup (perhaps too clever for its own good) and effective cinematic trick.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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