CRI听力: Movie Review: Shutter Island

Watching Martin Scorsese's latest movie Shutter Island is a lot like mental combat with the director. However hard you try to maintain your psyche, it's likely that a movie viewer would eventually lose the battle and is consequently put on the bed for psychological experimentation.

In 1954, U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) embarks on a journey to investigate the disappearance of murderous Rachael Solando on Shutter Island, which imprisons the country's most dangerous and criminally insane patients.

As Teddy desperately tries to discover the truth, he gradually realizes that the whole facility is a cover for heinous experiments on the mentally ill. All he can do at this point is attempt to escape and reveal the truth.

However, when you stand in Teddy's shoes and experience his horror, the story takes a U-turn and progresses to the point where you begin to doubt Teddy's sanity and become suspicious of everything the movie has shown you.

In Shutter Island, the director inherits the traditional excellence of classic psychological thrillers. Alfred Hitchcock's influence is evident, especially when it comes to setting and mise-en-scene. With stormy weather, an isolated island, a maze-like fortress and a grisly hospital embedded, Shutter Island offers you an opportunity to recapture the essence of classic film noir.

Pioneering Martin Scorsese not only demonstrates his solid ability in old-fashioned suspense-building but also stays at his most unsaddled with an innovative script. He puts a story in another bigger story or vice versa so swiftly and secretly that you have to ponder over its storyline afterwards.

If you follow Teddy from the very beginning and experience everything he experiences, you might be confused and eventually forced to believe that Teddy might also be a Shutter Island patient and has hallucinated everything you've seen.

This is a film I would recommend for a second watching, to enable a much sounder understanding. Even though the movie will leave you less breathless the second time, you will be able to appreciate how the reality and illusion (it's hard to tell which is which at times throughout the movie) are delicately melded by the director.

At last, a reminder to every interested moviegoer: if you are not so sure about the state of your mind, be cautious before you go to the cinema or insert the disc into the player, given the possibility that you may begin to doubt your own sanity after the movie.

On my one-to-ten movie scale, I give Shutter Island an EIGHT.