Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese knew very well what they were doing
Shutter Island would not have existed without Wuthering Heights. Yes, I know it sounds strange, but it’s the truth: the author of the original novel, Dennis Lehane (who already made Mystic River), wanted to pay homage to pulp and B-series while writing a hybrid between the works of the Brontë sisters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. His intention may not have been fully transferred to the screen when Martin Scorsese took the reins of the project, but what remained was a film that has gone down in cinema history.
How scary, don’t ashutter me
Originally, the film was going to be named after the asylum, Ashcliffbut it was changed to Shutter Islandwhich is an anagram of both “truths and lies” (“truths and lies”) like “truths and denials” (“truths and denials”). But the idea was not lost and in 2014, four years after the success of the film, HBO wanted to make a series that would serve as a prequel. Fortunately or unfortunately, it came to nothing and no one has ever been tempted to turn it into a franchise.
Beware: From here on out there are SPOILERS for the finale.
And it will not be, of course, due to its lack of quality and subtlety. For example, to indicate that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is really hospitalized, in each scene in which he wants to smoke it is another person who lights the cigarette for him. Some believe that this is because no inmate, for obvious reasons, can handle a lighter by themselves.but it really has another meaning, especially since in the second half of the film he does light his own matches.
It has another explanation: how Teddy Daniels is afraid of the fire in his head, because of the fire that – he believes – killed his wife. However, when he begins to find out things about him and his wife, he loses that fear, and finally dares to light his own matches. Or maybe it’s that he enters more and more into his own story and his own madness. In any case, Shutter Island It is a film that always leaves more interpretations than answers: Was it a brainwash? Is it all real? It’s all a lie? You would have to ask Scorsese, but no one should be surprised if the answer is that he has understood the entire film backwards.
