Zzzzzz
This bored me to tears. And I usually love Scorcese’s stuff. I couldn’t finish it.
shareI remember a whole bunch of people walking out when I saw it. Just another dull lead vehicle for a Hollywood chosen one.
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MovieChat Forums > Shutter Island (2010) Discussion > Zzzzzz
Finish it, you’ll be glad you did, and immediately want to rewatch it.
shareThe first three quarters are quite good as a slow-burn eerie investigation with the milieu of post-WW2 America and interesting flashbacks to Dachau Concentration Camp. Unfortunately, the last quarter ruins the movie for me. Don’t get me wrong, the ‘twist’ could’ve been done in a compelling, streamlined way, such as in “The Sixth Sense,” but instead everything’s unnecessarily drawn out. For instance, the final sequence between DiCaprio and Michelle Williams is dreadfully dull.
shareInteresting. My jaw was on the floor for that sequence, it’s where everything came together in a horrific way. How you found a man returning home to find his three children drowned and then shoots his psychotic wife in the chest ‘dull’ confounds me. In fact the last act is my favourite part of the film, it’s a catharsis for all the abstract craziness building up to it.
shareNah Wuchak is correct, they bungled it in the last 30 minutes. Taking the drama off the island was a mistake. And the 'twist" was contrived in a bad way.
shareA bizarre opinion. How would you have ended it instead?
shareThe doctors were experimenting on patients to make a super soldier like the nazis but ended up just making a bunch of freaks that Leo has to mercy kill before tracking down the doctors who make a revelation that the govt he works for is doing the same thing as the govt he fought against in ww2 and he was under the illusion that he went to Germany to liberate when his higher ups were simply using that narrative as a cover to get the research for human engineering.
shareOK, this film is not about bonkers conspiracies, it’s about mental illness 🤦🏻♂️
shareWhat are you talking about? The whole film is about a bonker conspiracy, they shuttled a loon out to sea, convinced him he was a marshal and went through the most elaborate conspiracy ever put to film to persuade him his delusions were real and then pull the rug out from under his feet after the film became too contrived to figure itself out "the rationale being eventually he will realize he's nuts🤦🏻♂️"
There has long been a cliche in Hollywood that when you've written yourself into a tangle just make the character a mental patient.
That’s not the case here since this film is based on a well known novel, not some last minute Hollywood script rewrite.
And the medical treatment is not a conspiracy, certainly nothing like the bonkers political conspiracy that you wish the film was about, and which is the product of Teddy’s extremely damaged mind.
"And the medical treatment is not a conspiracy"
They literally conspire against Teddy. The film just argues it's to help him get well.
It's bonkers to believe they'd let a violent nut run around the entire facility for days and get everyone in on the joke while there are thousands of other patients.
The treatment is to help him get well and it works, he snaps out of his delusion.
Your attempt to conflate the treatment with your bonkers conspiracy theory isn’t working.
It's a conspiracy and a rather absurd and elaborate one at that.
shareNo, it’s a medical treatment, and a very compassionate one considering the alternative - lobotomy.
Your attempt to conflate the treatment with your bonkers conspiracy theory isn’t working.
Agreed Lord Rake. It's like if you had a kid who thought that there was a monster in the closet, and so you actually put one in there to prove him wrong. Make that make sense.
If there isn't any more to this movie than a silly role-play exercise for a delusional patient that would obviously have the opposite effect than what they claim it would (and that's exactly what happened--He grew more paranoid and violent as the movie went on as opposed to bringing him back to reality and sanity), then we don't have a whole lot to work with. And it's impossible for us to know what parts of it really happened. You might as well dismiss everything that we just saw as the delusions of a mad-man.
Every scene gets more and more ridiculous, and then we get to the lighthouse, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, they prove us wrong and out-do themselves. I was like "We're supposed to believe this nonsense? Anagrams? You have got to be kidding me".
If this is supposed to be some profound movie about the tragedy of mental illness, it fails miserably. Teddy seems perfectly normal for most of the movie, and then he does get pretty crazy at the end, but who wouldn't after all of the ridiculous scenarios that he was put through? It's like everybody in the movie was trying to drive him insane, not bring him back to sanity. I know that the field of psychiatry was new back in the '50s and that they didn't know what they were doing, but I'm sure they could have done better than that.
I should've given more specifics, but I was talking about the sequence where he hugs & kisses his wife on the beach blanket. I was like, "Please end."
The reason I dislike the last quarter so much -- besides being needlessly drawn out -- is that it makes the previous three quarters a lie. It never happened (I'm talking about the main story of the US Marshals investigating the asylum). Since this was all in the mind of DiCaprio's character, it wasn't reality... and that was the compelling chunk of the movie for me. It's similar to a "it was all a dream" twist, which I find to be an eye-rolling copout.
Speaking of which, the only way I can appreciate "The Night of the Following Day" is to pretend the brief "it was all a dream" scene at the end isn't there. Back then, in 1966, it can perhaps be justified on the grounds that it was a somewhat fresh ending for a mainstream crime drama/thriller, but not in 2010. Not for me, anyway. As for the more specific "it was all in his mind" scenario, it was done almost a decade earlier in "A Beautiful Mind."
I'm not saying fans of the ending are wrong. It's a well-made movie and, if people like the twist, they like it. But I would've preferred the story going the way it was going in DiCaprio's psychotic fantasy -- Mengele-like experiments being conducted on American soil by the sanction of the Govt so shortly after WW2.
As it is, the film could've been titled "DiCaprio's Trip to Fantasy Island."
Clearly you want to see a film about an elaborate evil government conspiracy. This is a film about mental illness.
shareNo, I just want to see a movie with a compelling last act, not the overlong and tedious climax we get here. The fact that it makes (the bulk of) the rest of the film a lie is a secondary issue.
shareIt’s not a ‘lie’, the whole film telegraphs the medical role-play aspect from the beginning with its crazy artificial style, constant nods to the staff being ‘in on it’ and the fact Teddy’s walking around in an inmate outfit by the half way point.
The last act is riveting, and the film is well loved, as well as being one of Scorsese’s most successful films. Your bizarre nitpick is exclusive to you and a tiny contingent of conspiracy nuts. Normal people love the film.
Even if Cawley & Naehring set everything up in the first three-quarters of the movie to be a therapeutic role-playing session for Teddy that lasted 2-3 days -- part of it during a severe storm (rolling my eyes) -- and the bulk of the staff were in on the grand charade, it would still be a lie and not something that was really happening, except in Teddy's mind.
Furthermore, even in this scenario some things wouldn't be part of the role-playing set-up, but totally in Teddy's delusions, such as Rachel #2 in the cave and their discussion. As such, this leaves the viewer trying to figure out what was real in the first three-quarters of the film and what wasn't.
Yet I find it hard to believe that Cawley & Naehring were willing to go such absurd lengths to try to help a single patient. So, if the whole thing wasn't a roll-playing session, it's anyone's guess what was real in the first three-quarters of the story and what was just in Teddy's ill mind. For instance, we know that Cawley & Naehring are actual people who direct the affairs of the asylum and Aule is Teddy's primary doctor, but Teddy traveling to the island on a boat as a US Marshal with his newbie assistant were his pipe dream.
I found the last act to be anything but riveting. As already pointed out, it's a variation on the "it was all a dream" twist. Now, this could have been executed in an effective, efficient way, like in "The Sixth Sense," but it wasn't. I found it dreadfully dull and unnecessarily drawn out. It didn't help that a similar twist was already done a decade earlier in "A Beautiful Mind."
That said, keep in mind what I stressed earlier: "I'm not saying that fans of the ending are wrong. It's a well-made movie and, if people like the twist, they like it." In light of this, why you're up in arms badmouthing people who don't like the last act as "not normal" is a curious thing.
a tiny contingent of conspiracy nuts.
What's up with this "conspiracy nut" bit? The movie itself introduces the idea of Mengele-like experiments being conducted on American soil by the sanction of the Federal Govt shortly after WW2. While this turns out to be bogus in the story, its nevertheless something intrinsic to the film (in Teddy's mind) and so the viewer doesn't have to be a "conspiracy nut" to entertain the idea.
From the way you talk, it seems like you think the American Federal Govt is pure as the driven snow, then and now (lol). share