Shutter Island: A Movie Blog

Shutter Island

The privilege of a distorted perspective of reality and the complexity of our brain to be able to do it.

Disclaimer: This review is not technical but merely based on the emotions I felt while I am watching the movie and how I understood it after.

Which would be worse: To live as a monster or die as a good man?

      These last words of Teddy Daniels played by Leonardo DiCaprio hits hard when I realized that it is not bad at all to live in a fake world that was created by his mind. To live with a distorted reality. If living in the truth is as painful as being tortured that feels like killing yourself every day until your demise.

Shutter Island showed the dark side of how our minds work when coping with severe trauma: lost, confused, clueless, and delusional. But for me, I did not see it that way. After watching this film and further assessing it, I was mesmerized by the power and complexity of our brain, especially in the movie when it is trying to protect Teddy against the traumas he experienced while in the military and with the tragic passing of his entire family.

I thought to myself, Teddy never left the war. After he fought the Nazis, he entered another one when he battled from within all the violence he committed and witnessed during the war. He coped up with it by drinking.

When he went back to his family he was struck with the reality that his wife Dolores is not mentally stable which resulted in unimaginable circumstances when she drowned all their kids. Somehow, he managed to remain his "sanity" by coping up with it, defending himself by erasing it on his memory, and creating fake scenarios and delusions.

Teddy has never left the war, but the war after his time in the military occurred inside him. In this battle, there are no Nazis and only his mind acting as both the enemy and savior. As a result of this, he became completely lost in his reality.

Some people pitied his character. They felt sorry for how he is lost. But for me, I did not see it that way. I was fascinated. I saw his distorted perspective and delusions as a strength that reflected his soldier trait: to fight the enemies. This time, the enemies are not humans but in a form of bad memories he has.

As someone who has my own set of traumas, I have this thought of wanting to have a device that would erase these bad experiences for life. This thought is the reason why I was hooked with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which I want to make a review in the coming days. And so, I find him lucky to be able to have the ability to filter his traumas and keep only the tolerable ones.

It hurts me that he is labeled as a mental patient and a danger to society when in fact it was just him protecting himself from the pain he endured in his past. It hurts me to see Teddy being rejected by society for creating these delusions that he was still a good man. We all wanted to be portrayed as good people. And I hope they gave Teddy that right: the right to live without guilt and repentance.

On the other note, I love how the actors gave life to their characters especially Leonardo DiCaprio who brought Teddy Daniels to life on the silver screen. I am convinced that he was robbed by the Academy for not even nominating him in the best actor in a leading role category. I also want to commend the people behind this film who managed to hide the truth from me while giving hints to that unexpected twist in the end. 

That plot twist made me gasp and gave me goosebumps cementing itself as one of my top favorites in my movie list.