Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2009)

Yesterday I saw Martin Scorsese's new film Shutter Island (2009) which I highly recommend, even though I wasn't totally convinced of Leonardo DiCaprio's performance in some of the more emotional scenes. What I found interesting about the film, apart from obvious references to psychological thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) ) and perhaps even the psychological exploration by Virginia Woolfe in her novel To The Lighthouse (1927), was Shutter Island, a character it its own right, with its stillness and dark, foreboding presence that presides over the whole film with an authority that in the end represents not only Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but all power structures that can intervene, take hold and ultimately have power over us. Indeed between 1950 and 1960 the CIA - Office of Scientific Intelligence initiated MKULTRA, a project that involved 'the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function' in American and Canadian subjects. (See: Wiki entry). The film also reveals how we collect and process information and often make incorrect assumptions often to our own and others detriment. It reminded me of Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), how alert we have to be to little bits of data, how we are often faced with the question what is truth and how did we come to this understanding? The soundtrack is saturated with contemporary classical music, which appears to exemplify the ghosts that haunt the islands inhabitants. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) could be you or I, plagued by fantasies, haunted by memories, unwilling or unable to let go of the past!