Shutter Island Notes

Shutter Island (2010), Martin Scorsese, IMDB rating: 8.0/10

Shutter Island (2010)
Dir.: Matrin Scorsese
IMDB rating: 8.0/10
Budget: $80 million
Gross R  $294,803,014 

Set in the 1950's, it features a federal Marshal ( Teddy Daniels) who's been called in to search for a missing patient at the mental facilities on the island. Throughout the film it's shown that he is still mourning the loss of his wife two years ago in a fire, caused by someone who may or may not be on the island. Teddy sees visions and hallucinations of his dead wife as the film goes on and she urges him on through the film, but Teddy soon decides that there is something else afoot on the island and decides to search for what he believes are  disturbing experiments taking place on the island.

The film is a typical psychological Thriller; it features a strong contrast between the light and the dark, often teddy finds himself walking in the darkness of the islands facilities, and his dreams are often done with slight continuity errors in the edits done to intentionally make the viewers think that there is something wrong with the scene and its contents. For example when one character is smoking in the dreams, the smoke flows backwards and in another scene his wife is holding a bottle of whisky which disappears in the next shot. Edits and errors like this take place throughout the film and often to make the viewer feel that there is something wrong. Also the sounds in the film are often pronounced like the dripping of water in the darkness and the screams of the patients in the hospital. The music in the film often takes the form of piano notes, often long and drawn out-  quite jarring and isolated at points for example:





Also the lighting plays a key role in the film for example:

 Teddy is in a dark corridor  that is scarcely lit- he is using matches to navigate his way through the darkness.

Here we have the use of a blue filter, to make the world seem colder that it is to our character, the entire film is from the view of Teddy, so the audience only know what he knows through the film. That is typical of the genre, we only see what the main character sees and this plays into the aspeact of the unreliable narrator.

Also note the use of editing, the jump cuts made during the following dream sequence- to make it appear jarring to the viewer, also watch the qhisky bottle that Teddys wife is holding.