By: Dania Santhosh
Shutter Island is one of those movies that leave you utterly perplexed at the ending. The film, without a doubt, is intense. We are given an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel with Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. An excellent ensemble, but the viewers and critics had a different say on the movie. It was equally criticized and well received. Few of the satisfactory segments include the intentions of the psychiatrists and the mental anguish encountered by the characters.
In terms of portraying mental health, Shutter Island has not done an unprecedented job. Teddy Daniels is initiated as a US Marshall who has come to Ashecliffe Hospital situated on Shutter Island. He was summoned on a mission to get the whereabouts of a patient who had escaped her room. Throughout the movie, the audience is left making assumptions and conclusions to many of the happenings of the film. Meanwhile, Teddy is about find the unethical activities being carried out at Ashecliffe and is about to expose the mental asylum which is allegedly penetrated with torture and expecting him to make a shocking discovery. But we then come to find the truth that Teddy is actually a patient at the hospital and is one of the most dangerous patients there. The ending leaves everyone awestruck, only to know that the movie was focused on psychosis and a whole lot of exaggeration. Then the truth that Teddy Daniels was just a name he created for himself and his actual name was Andrew Laeddis, an anagram of his own name, comes out.
In the film, Andrew/ Teddy faced delusional disorder, where he creates a false world to escape his own troubled and dark past. Shutter Island did not illustrate the actuality of mental health; nonetheless it did show the ethical nature of psychologists to change the traditional approach to make an effort to cure the patient. The movie fell short in describing the authenticities of mental health.
Now Teddy is an ex US Marshall who was happily married to his wife and had three children. On a Saturday, Teddy comes home to find that his suicidal wife had drowned their children and he is left in utter shock and is unable to revive any of them. He kills wife to alleviate her pain. He was a patient who likely endured PTSD from his former days in war, to add to this he had to witness the death of his children and murdered his own wife. His mind created an alternate reality, the reason being that he found it difficult to imagine his wife murdering their own children. To avoid being reminded of the traumatic experiences that he had faced, his mind created an illusion where the occurrences takes place in other lives and not his own. In the end of the movie, we are posed with the thought on whether Andrew/Teddy is cured or still suffering from the disorders. One possible answer is that he was cured and still decided to undergo a lobotomy so that he can be palliated from the grief and guilt but this might not be the exact ending. The climax is still debated now and will probably be for years to come as there is no logical explanation from the filmmakers and remains ambiguous.
Shutter Island is a fascinating film with action, mystery and suspense as well. The film has sketched some truths along with exaggeration. The clinical procedures that were practiced in the 1950s, the time setting of the film, are accurately portrayed. Lobotomies were the resort to calm a patient that is violent or severely problematic. It also shows using an ice prick to probe the patient’s brain through the nerves present in the eye. Down the lane, after almost 50 years, lobotomy is still practiced but the procedure has been modernized. In the film we are given glimpses of the characters mentioning this procedure.
The film may not be an excellent illustration of mental health and accurate clinical procedures but the cinematic excellence is purely splendid. The movie wonderfully exhibited the defense mechanisms of the mind and the numerous paths it can gravitate to, mental anguish of the character and the need to be free from pain.
Tabeer 