Masculinity Movies Reviews Shutter Island

Speaking of movies (see the previous post below), Masculinity Movies has posted a review of Shutter Island, an excellent psycho-horror homage to film noir with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, along with Mark Ruffalo, Max von Sydow, and Ben Kingsley - and directed by Martin Scorsese. This is a classic style suspense drama with clues and confusion and twists, lots of rising tension, and all leading to one climactic scene. A feminist critic might see this as a typically male plot structure.

Here is a plot summary from IMDb:

It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

This is a "user review," and the user in question is Paul Miller, a consultant psychiatrist & psychogeriatrician trained in Northern Ireland with a special interest in the effects of trauma on people - including miscarriages of justice.

Published: May 23, 2012

Shutter Island Synopsis

Drama set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding nearby. This movie has an amazing twist at the heart of it and you may wish to watch it BEFORE reading this. However, you will want to watch it again.

Genre: Thriller

Production year: 2010

Director: Martin Scorsese

Male actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

"Denial is Not a River in Egypt"

by Paul Miller

Past Traumas

Teddy Daniels - the US Marshall - is a troubled man who has returned from WWII having seen the horrors of the holocaust in the Nazi death camps. Pierre Janet (30 May 1859 – 24 February 1947) IMHO the true father of psychotherapy coined the words ‘dissociation’ and ‘subconscious’. He stated that traumatic memories were stored differently in the brain to normal memories and this is now been proven with modern scanning techniques. Essentially traumatic memories are relived rather than re-experienced. He was one of the first people to draw a connection between events in the subject's past life and his or her present day trauma. This is what we see Teddy experiencing in the movie. 

Go read the whole review.