This concludes my participation in the Film Preservation Blogathon: For the Love of Film (Noir). This is a fundraiser, folks, so send a few bucks to this link. Proceeds benefit the Film Noir Foundation and will help fund the restoration of The Sound of Fury (1950).
Let's get this out of the way first. Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) is ridiculous. Now, I knew that going in. I listened to an audiobook version of Dennis Lehane's novel a couple of years ago. Others who are not so forearmed may feel a little pissed off when they get to the end of the movie.
Here's what happens in the movie: US Marshalls Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have been summoned to Shutter Island, a psychatric compound off the coast of Massachusetts that houses the dangrously, criminally insane. One of their patients, a woman who drowned her children, has mysteriously escaped from her cell and cannot be found. Once there, they run into obstruction at every turn from the sinister administrator of the island, Dr. John Cawley. The hospital, it seems has secrets. Daniels, too, has secrets. He's a veteran of the war, in which he was present at the liberation of Dachau. It haunts his dreams, waking and otherwise. His ulterior motive for taking the case is to confront the man who set the fire that burned his wife to death. His wife haunts his dreams, too. Getting anything done is a challenge, however, as the island has been isolated from the world by a raging hurricane.
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