Movie Review: Shutter Island

Yesterday a new mystery, thriller movie came out called Shutter Island. This movie is about the implausible escape of a brilliant murderess brings U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels played by Leonardo DiCaprio and his new partner played by Mark Ruffalo to Ashecliffe Hospital. I’m here with the director of this mastermind movie Martin Scorsese. The purpose of Teddy Daniels having flashbacks of himself in World War Two was to get to know the character more. The island reminded Teddy Daniels of the concertation camps he saw in Germany.

This is shown when Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule a driving and see the electric barbwire along the fence in ward C and Teddy says, “electrophile perimeter”.

How Teddy gets his flashbacks of him in world war two was due to the music on the record player that was playing in Dr Cawley office. The music playing reminded Teddy of the time he found the commandant in his office while him and his soldiers raided his office with paper work falling around his office.

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The theme of power and control is a very powerful technique that is used in the film. How we conveyed this theme in the movie was by having a range having certain characters have the power or control at one point of the movie. For instance, Chuck and Dr John controlling what Teddy did around the island as you find out towards the end of the film that Teddy is a passement and is being followed by Chuck who is a doctor at the island.

Teddy had a lot of power and control throughout the movie. Examples of this happening is when Teddy had the control over whether he was lobotomized, he had the power over chuck as he thought he was his boss and he had power to save his kids if he helped his wife. Another character who had power and control in the film was Teddy’s wife Dolores. Dolores had control and power over Teddy’s decisions as she kept coming in Teddy’s mind whenever he to make an important decision.There is some obvious way we portrayed the theme of isolation like the island is sounded by water and if you tried to swim back to the mainland you would most likely die. The island is like Alcatraz. What makes the island also isolated is that there is only on way on and off the island. Another way we used the theme of isolation is when all of the patients are in their own cells and all of the doors are locked. Another uses of isolation that was clear is when Chuck goes missing which makes Teddy feel alone and isolated because he has no one else. The fire and water mean more than just fire and water. It means Appearance and reality. The fire represents Appearance. The fire is symbolic of Teddy’s fantasy world in the film. Every time fire appears, Teddy starts to hallucinate. This is shown when Teddy supposedly finds missing patient 67 (Rachel Solando) The entire scene with Solando, who was a fictional character made up for his mental break plan, when there talking over the fire. This can also be drawn when the story about how his children and wife died in a fire. Dolores’ body becomes ash while the entire room is burning.

Which then means water represents reality. The water is representative of Teddy’s reality. Water can be linked to what reality did happen in Teddys life. Example of this is when his family died in an apartment fire, while water (reality) stands as what truly happened. Dolores drowned his children in the lake near there house. Using sound in any film makes the audience feel what the characters are feeling. Using diegetic and non-diegetic sound throughout the film was to put the audience in the situation of Teddy Daniels and how he is feeling at certain moments. An example of the film using diegetic sound was when Teddy and Chuck are shown to Dr Crawley office, we hear the start of a classical music fade in. As the music gets louder, the camera angle became a high angle shot of the building.

From this we can assume it was used as a sound bridge to keep the scene flowing and catch the audience’s attention as the scene progresses. After some dialogue (whilst the music is still playing) we see a high angle shot of the record player playing. This lets us know that we are now hearing parallel, diegetic sound as the room they’re in is very posh and something you would associate with posh is classical music.