Shutter Island: Underrated

[Majik1387]

Vertigo is one of if not my favorite Hitchcock movie, and hearing it being compared to this dreck saddens me.

 

[Doctor Jones]

Funny, I liked this better than Vertigo.

 

[Rez]

And I contend that Shutter Island is a story that works far better when you know the whole story about Teddy/Andrew. While it is not as good as Psycho, ESB or Memento, it is a really good one that rewards the viewer when they watch it as a trip into the broken mind victimized by violence and guilt.


I'll give you that most people were caught off guard by the twist in "Fight Club," but I don't know how how everyone pegged the plot of "Shutter Island" just because you did. I read the book first (to be fair I figured about 1/3 through most of the twist), so it didn't affect me one way or the other. However, when you can go to amazon or imdb and still see arguments/debates that Teddy wasn't crazy (that's even in this thread) it must have surprised at least some people as they refuse to accept it.

And the one thing most people don't get is that Dolores was Rachel and that the daughter in his visions at a concentration camp and then saw Rachel help him drown....was his actual daughter. That I did not see coming in the book and most people didn't realize just how ****ed up what happened to Andrew/Teddy was.


The twist was how you got into his mind. His paranoia reflected his time (the 1950s Cold War/HUAC era and comparatively the Bush era America) and getting into his tragedy was being in his head where he doesn't know if he's sane. Another similar film is A Beautiful Mind where there is a twist midway through the movie, but most people realized Ed Harris was imaginary (though a lot were surprised by Paul Bettany). In any case, the point is beyond the twist. The twist was device, not the heart of the movie. That is why it goes on for almost a half hour after the reveal. If it was just about the twist it would have ended a few minutes later. Just because it was primarily about the twist to you does not mean it was that way to the audience members....or the writer and director for that matter.


And would the anguish and pain of Andrew had been as raw and cathartic at the end of the movie if you knew he was crazy in a failing role playing game at the start who killed his children-murdering wife? Even if you figure out he is crazy it is about the journey he takes that compels the film.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on your first point. I'd say that as a film, it *does* work better "knowing" the whole story, but only because it fails so completely at being a mystery with a twist. But of course, "work better" really means "works at all" in this case.

It still is painfully obvious that the film was written with certain intentions that were never executed properly- both in the script and in everything afterward. I liken it to something I used to do as a kid... in elementary school. Every time we had a project I'd write some massive 2 and a half page story that was all about THE TWIST BABY. Since I thought I wasn't a total idiot, I'd work in hints and clues as to what was coming, so when someone finished reading it 2 minutes later they could go back and see how awesome I was because "I HAD IT PLANNED ALL ALONG, SEE, AND YOU NEVER SAW IT COMING! AAAAHAHAHA!"
But of course, everyone saw it coming. I was like, eight. I still kind of want to go back and punch Mr. McCrone, if he's still alive, for playing along and going "WOW Dan my mind is BLOWN!"

And I guess that's just really a long way of me saying: This movie feels like it was written by an eight year old. One that is too stupid and proud of himself to realize that the entire concept of his story is ruined by the fact that it's too obvious.

It's a tough act, because really, once you know you can't unknow it. For everyone involved with the film, I'm sure there was a sense that this would be quite the little mind**** of a film. Unfortunately, most if not all of them probably had the film explained to them in a sentence or two before signing on to it, so rather than experiencing the whole "man.. that was really obvious" they thought, "sounds like a great twist! lets make this ****!"


I will agree that there exists room for debate in this film, although nearly all of it that I've seen and heard rests on whether or not he's crazy at the end when he decides to lobotomize himself. I thought it was extremely obvious which it was and that anyone who thought otherwise was a moron, but that's me. Ironically enough, my favorite part of this film were those last 5 minutes or so, because the last actual scene combined with the final shot of the lighthouse were the first actually mysterious, ambiguous moments of the film.

This does not excuse the cluster**** that is the entire setup and structure of the rest of the movie.

You mention Fight Club as an example of a movie with a successful twist, but then go on to talk about A Beautiful Mind and how the twist is largely unimportant, because it happens before the end and then the movie goes on for another 40 minutes. But.... so does Fight Club. And while I'm not going to go time it, I feel like a lot more happens inbetween the twist in FC and the end than it does in A Beautiful Mind.

The twist is he's crazy, the reveal is what happened to his wife. The reveal is rather successful, the twist is not. Yet another film that's come to mind when thinking about Shutter Island is the awesome K-PAX. The films have remarkable similar plots but the storyline and execution are entirely different. People try to help a man at a mental institution who suffered a terrible tragedy involving his family, but he may or may not be crazy. There is a similar reveal in K-PAX that is treated like a vague mystery for most of the film, but ... there's no twist, not really. There's a level of ambiguity in the film that far surpasses anything in Shutter Island, and yet the entire film plays more as a character drama than an attempted bait and switch suspenseful mystery.

You say that it's not about the mystery, it's not about the twist. I say if that were the case then there would not be one in the first place. No one structures an entire film around a twist *planning* that everyone will already know what's going on.

And thus as a mystery, as a twist, the film fails.

 

[DACrowe]

Vertigo is one of if not my favorite Hitchcock movie, and hearing it being compared to this dreck saddens me.

It was heavily influenced by Vertigo. Actually I find Vertigo along with The Birds to be Hitchcock's most overrated movie. As you say, the twist I saw coming a mile away (and I did not know how it was going to end the first time I saw it) and it drags for the entire second act. I mean viscerally it is still impressive but I have never liked how so many critics rate it above so many of his other masterpieces like Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Notorious, Dial M For Murder, Psycho, etc.

But different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

 

[Spider-Who?]

Rez, I think people would take your opinions more seriously (and you'd come across like less of a jerk) if you stopped referring to those who disagree or saw the film in a different light as "morons". Really no need for it. We get it; you didn't like the movie. Doesn't mean those that did are stupid.

For me, like mentioned before, I thought early on that he was mentally ill; they pretty much TELL you this with his dream sequences and flashbacks to WW2; so to say "ah ha! I knew he was crazy all along! the writers are hacks!" is not a weakness of the story, since they wanted you to know that his character was a broken one. They WANT you to know that his character is not right. They WANT you to know that something is going on with the doctors and his partner. Unless people knew the story before hand, I don't think its reasonable to assume that within the first 20 minutes, the entire world (aside from the "morons", of course) said: "Okay, I get it. He's actually the "missing" patient here because he went crazy after killing his wife, and this whole event is nothing but a huge enactment with the purpose of trying to cure him in hopes of stopping the abuse of drugs and lobotomies..." mostly because half of that summary isn't even revealed until much later in the story.

As more me, I ended up becoming invested in the character and allowed the aspects that were intended to seal his belief that there was a conspiracy (ie: the Nazi doctor, the doctor hiding in the cave, etc) to augment my own thoughts. I subconsciously ended up choosing to believe what I wanted to believe (that Leo was not a patient), much like Leo's character was trying to choose whether he was sane or not. My reaction and thoughts during the "reveal" echoed Leo's, because I wanted him to be sane (or at least, not a patient there).

I enjoyed the movie greatly and allowed the movie to take me where it wanted to take me. Call me a moron, a cinephile with poor taste, what ever. The fact of the matter is, movies and their quality are purely subjective, and liking a movie does not make someone unintelligent.

 

[The Englishman]

Rez, I think people would take your opinions more seriously (and you'd come across like less of a jerk) if you stopped referring to those who disagree or saw the film in a different light as "morons". Really no need for it. We get it; you didn't like the movie. Doesn't mean those that did are stupid.

For me, like mentioned before, I thought early on that he was mentally ill; they pretty much TELL you this with his dream sequences and flashbacks to WW2; so to say "ah ha! I knew he was crazy all along! the writers are hacks!" is not a weakness of the story, since they wanted you to know that his character was a broken one. They WANT you to know that his character is not right. They WANT you to know that something is going on with the doctors and his partner. Unless people knew the story before hand, I don't think its reasonable to assume that within the first 20 minutes, the entire world (aside from the "morons", of course) said: "Okay, I get it. He's actually the "missing" patient here because he went crazy after killing his wife, and this whole event is nothing but a huge enactment with the purpose of trying to cure him in hopes of stopping the abuse of drugs and lobotomies..." mostly because half of that summary isn't even revealed until much later in the story.

As more me, I ended up becoming invested in the character and allowed the aspects that were intended to seal his belief that there was a conspiracy (ie: the Nazi doctor, the doctor hiding in the cave, etc) to augment my own thoughts. I subconsciously ended up choosing to believe what I wanted to believe (that Leo was not a patient), much like Leo's character was trying to choose whether he was sane or not. My reaction and thoughts during the "reveal" echoed Leo's, because I wanted him to be sane (or at least, not a patient there).

I enjoyed the movie greatly and allowed the movie to take me where it wanted to take me. Call me a moron, a cinephile with poor taste, what ever. The fact of the matter is, movies and their quality are purely subjective, and liking a movie does not make someone unintelligent.

Yeah but Rez is intelligent because he was writing stories with plot twists in them when he was 8 years old....

 

[Rez]

Cute.

For the record, I didn't hate the film- in fact, if forced to watch one of Leo's dead wife movies from 2010 every day of the week for a year, I'd pick Shutter Island 6 out of the 7 days and Inception on Sunday.

My major complaint comes to the defenders of the film that claim the twist didn't matter- it did, it was just handled poorly.

I thought Crowe and I were taking eachother pretty seriously.
Oh, right, ya know, I had yet to call anyone here specifically stupid or a moron, but if you're too dim to pick up on that (or the rather constant self depreciation- especially in my tale of writing masterpieces as an eight year old) then you're both stupid morons.

Edit:

Also, I find judging people by their taste in films perfectly acceptable. I used to have a friend that was always bugging me to go to the latest Scary Movie, Date Movie, and all that crap.

Needless to say, he was a ****ing idiot, and that was proof enough for me to make sure that we weren't friends anymore.

 

[Spider-Who?]

I agree that the twist mattered, but I disagree as to the degree of how "poorly" it was handled.

Again, whats with the insults and negative feedback? I never said that you targeted people specifically on these boards; but it was quite obvious that you were making sweeping generalizations about the intelligence of others based on their reactions to a movie. You want to judge people's intelligence based on their SATs, that's fine, but to do so based on what types of entertainment they enjoy and how they react to it? Please.

I presented my opinion without insulting your intelligence, gave my reasons for what I thought and why, and your rebuttal is nothing more than a sarcastic response that ends with calling us "stupid morons"? How highly intellectual of you. If you can't discuss things as unimportant as a movie's plot without grade school name calling, I really see no further use in continuing conversation with you. Reported.

 

[Figs]

Also, I find judging people by their taste in films perfectly acceptable. I used to have a friend that was always bugging me to go to the latest Scary Movie, Date Movie, and all that crap.

Needless to say, he was a ****ing idiot, and that was proof enough for me to make sure that we weren't friends anymore.

How mature.

Judging people for who they are by their taste in a simple form of entertainment is quite pathetic. Only thing I agree with you on in this post is that those "Movie" movies are ****.

 

[The Englishman]

Cute.

For the record, I didn't hate the film- in fact, if forced to watch one of Leo's dead wife movies from 2010 every day of the week for a year, I'd pick Shutter Island 6 out of the 7 days and Inception on Sunday.

My major complaint comes to the defenders of the film that claim the twist didn't matter- it did, it was just handled poorly.

I thought Crowe and I were taking eachother pretty seriously.
Oh, right, ya know, I had yet to call anyone here specifically stupid or a moron, but if you're too dim to pick up on that (or the rather constant self depreciation- especially in my tale of writing masterpieces as an eight year old) then you're both stupid morons.

Edit:

Also, I find judging people by their taste in films perfectly acceptable. I used to have a friend that was always bugging me to go to the latest Scary Movie, Date Movie, and all that crap.

Needless to say, he was a ****ing idiot, and that was proof enough for me to make sure that we weren't friends anymore.

Oh man you got me, im a moron. By the way Shutter Island is my 2nd favorite film of 2010 behind........... you guessed it Inception!

 

[bullets]

Cute.

Also, I find judging people by their taste in films perfectly acceptable. I used to have a friend that was always bugging me to go to the latest Scary Movie, Date Movie, and all that crap.

Needless to say, he was a ****ing idiot, and that was proof enough for me to make sure that we weren't friends anymore.

You have to be kidding. There's no way someone would end a friendship over a taste in movies. Unless you found out they were watching snuff films or something.

 

[Rez]

DING DING DING! We have a winner.

I am kidding. Well, kind of. In that particular instance, the "Scary Movie" guy was a dolt for a lot of reasons, but that was a fantastic early indicator.

Why not judge someone based on their taste in art? It's no more rediculous than judging them based off their SAT's. In fact, I'd argue less. You can figure out what sense of humor someone has, similar interests, and yes, even degrees of intelligence and morals, based on their reactions to and taste in art.

Besides, we all judge people anyway(anyone who says they don't is lying), I at least try to keep track of what it is I'm judging them for.

Also, Englisman, I'm curious, how did you find Inception superior to Shutter Island? Outside of the hallway centerpiece and a few little bits here and there, most of the film fell flat for me. The "heart" of both films, Leo's family stuff and guilt, I felt was far better handled in Shutter Island.

 

[Gamma Ray]

Predictable, but a good movie.

 

[Kane52630]

You have to be kidding. There's no way someone would end a friendship over a taste in movies. Unless you found out they were watching snuff films or something.

Well it all depends if the friendship was ended professionally.

 

[returntovoid]

I think that contemporary cinema has mostly lost the power of visual storytelling.

But Shutter Island is an exception, I have to say.

 

[Eelectro 2]

this movie was such a waste of time. i thought there was going to be some kind of supernatural horror elements to this film, but instead i got a ridiculous film that only got worse and spiraled into lackluster when we find out hes a mental patient. i can give the film credit for keeping me on my seat for the majority, but will never want to watch this movie again because it just was such a disappointment. very misleading trailers

 

[Spider-Who?]

this movie was such a waste of time. i thought there was going to be some kind of supernatural horror elements to this film, but instead i got a ridiculous film that only got worse and spiraled into lackluster when we find out hes a mental patient. i can give the film credit for keeping me on my seat for the majority, but will never want to watch this movie again because it just was such a disappointment. very misleading trailers

I too thought there was going to be some type of supernatural aspect and was somewhat let down by that, but I greatly enjoyed the movie anyway.

 

[Doctor Jones]

this movie was such a waste of time. i thought there was going to be some kind of supernatural horror elements to this film, but instead i got a ridiculous film that only got worse and spiraled into lackluster when we find out hes a mental patient. i can give the film credit for keeping me on my seat for the majority, but will never want to watch this movie again because it just was such a disappointment. very misleading trailers

What a terrible way to judge a film. Just because it didn't have what you wanted, from trailers above all else, is your own fault.

 

[Gabe99]

YouTube:
Shutter Island: Why Perspective is Everything

 

[Boom]

I absolutely love this film.

 

[OcStat]

I really enjoyed this movie in the theater, have it on BR, but can never get the missus to sit through it again :'(

 

[scarlet-witch]

I loved Shutter Island, and I didn't see the ending coming at all when I saw it in theaters.

It had a few editing issues, but not enough to dampen it.