Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller about ghosts from the past and a search for the truth.
In 1954, US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) arrive at a hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient. As well as his preoccupation with the case, Teddy has to cope with constant nightmares of his wartime past and grief after the death of his wife. The more he discovers about the island and the treatment methods, the more he distrusts the witnesses’ testimonies, his partner, and his own sanity.
This neo-noir thriller by Martin Scorsese was his fourth collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese’s main screen alter-ego after years of working with Robert De Niro. It became one of his highest-grossing films and a seminal psychological thriller of the twenty-first century. A close but inventive adaptation of the novel by Dennis Lehane, who has gained wide acclaim after the adaptation for the screen of his other books Mystic River (2003, directed by Clint Eastwood) and Gone Baby Gone (2007, directed by Ben Affleck), like the book it is inspired by the rich legacy of B movies and pulp crime, which peaked in the years when the film is set, and layers multiple paranoid interpretations of events. But despite its familiar cultural codes, due to the intelligent work of the director the film still manages to surprise, leaving it up to the audience to decide what is real and what is illusion. Shutter Island is a thriller with many layers in the tradition of Hitchcock (Scorsese screened Hitchcock’s Vertigo for the actors before the shoot) and contains numerous clues that are hard to see the first time you watch.
The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.
Shutter Island
Director: Martin Scorsese
USA, 2010. 138 min. 18+