I'm going to spoil 'Shitter Island!'

Shutter Island has never been “my” movie, which is fine. Not every movie can be (you heard it here first, folks!). Mostly I think of it as a technically dazzling movie that I am emotionally detached from. I think it is very pretty, and pretty good. Why must a movie be “good” ? Is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face, huge? This viewing, however (I think my third career viewing), the ending really did land for me emotionally. I’m as surprised as you are!

Shutter Island is about a state trooper detective named Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) investigating the disappearance of an inmate of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane on the titular remote island off the coast of Boston Harbor… or is it?! Maybe that’s just what the movie wants you to think it’s about…

I’m never invested in the detective stuff in the film. “Who is 67?” idk who gives a fuck. I’ve always known there was a twist, even the first time I saw it, I simply understood inherently what the true premise was because I have eyes and ears and was watching the movie.

I’m trying to figure out, is this how I watch Vertigo? Am I just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Especially since I’ve seen it now a dozen or two times, do I invest in the romance between James Stewart and Kim Novak? I don’t know. Not really. I don’t know if I ever did, even the first time I watched it at 15. I may have already known what the last third of the film was from reading Web 1.0 blogs about great movies in high school. I guess I watch Vertigo now in light of what the real story ends up being. How does this or that reflect and refract on the ultimate theme of the picture. I don’t really do that with Shutter Island, though. I’m just like “okay” when I watch the first 100 minutes of Shutter Island.

I’ve written nothing of value yet (you’re welcome). I’m going to SPOIL THE MOVIE NOW IF ANYONE CARES. As I mentioned, I found the final minutes of the film really moving when watching this time. Teddy Daniels finally accepts that he is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at Ashecliffe, who has Dissociative Identity Disorder (do they ever call it anything specific? That’s what it is, though) and thinks he is a detective, so his doctors have allowed him to have the run of the island in this persona, hoping it would cure him to get to the end of his fictional investigation. And it works. But unfortunately for Andrew, that means he now has to grapple with the trauma of murdering his wife, who had drowned their three kids in the lake.

It should be illegal for a film to use “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter, but as far as I know, this was the first movie it was ever used in (Wikipedia disproves this in 30 seconds—but I will not revise). It is a beautiful if overused piece of music, and perfect to capture the tragic but real relationship between Andrew and his wife Dolores (a haunting Michelle Williams). The slow devastation as it sinks in what this means for Andrew is genuinely aching, just like the track.

The final moments of the film shows Andrew pretending to have reverted into the Teddy persona, because that means he will have to undergo a transorbital lobotomy. He asks his primary physician Dr. Sheehan (played by Scorsese-traitor Mark Ruffalo, who should be imprisoned, despite his talent) if it’s better to die as a good man or live as a monster. This signals to Sheehan that Andrew is fully present of mind, but choosing a life where he won’t have to be plagued by his trauma. A shattering end to a studio blockbuster, #142 on the IMDb Top 250. Shatter Island lmbo.

I decided to watch Shutter Island this week because I was having so much fun last time with DiCaprio’s mental deterioration with The Aviator, and Shutter Island ups the ante on that point, specifically by way of its subjective sound design.

The movie has basically wall to wall sound design and very little silence, which you may not notice if you didn’t watch it after enjoying a smooth sativa strain that makes you hypersensitive to sound, like me and Lydia Tár. I also watched it quite loud because my neighbor started playing EDM at 6am that morning for some reason, so out of spite I waited to start the movie until 10:30pm on a school night and kept the sound louder than was comfortable for me. I am a Scorpio.

Anyway, there is a low hum of sound throughout most of the picture. Not just, like, a low-frequency, steady whirr, but a whole symphony of specific sounds—clicking, beeping, chirping, pulsing oscillations, omnipresent gusts of wind, all completely devoid of any narrative connection. The level of detail in these sounds is astonishing—even if you don’t notice them, they induce a subconscious effect on the viewer. Teddy is in fight-or-flight mode for the entire film and the barrage of sound puts the audience in that state as well, getting under your skin and making your hair stick up straight, unable to feel any sense of peace until you literally have a section of your brain removed.

The last thing I will say is just an aside in my notes I just laughed at: “I’m the bald woman in the garden.” Aren’t we all.