A 'Shutter Island', Martin Scorsese (2010) Rewatch
by Gavin Wainwright.
I watched 'Shutter Island' last night with my son Elijah, I have a new appreciation for Scorcese's film.
When viewed from the theory that Leonardo has been gaslit into believing all is true about Teddy being a psycho army guy who killed his wife in response to her drowning their children, it is all linked to the CIA's final plan to create a Manchurian candidate, MKUltra strategies in CIA was started one year prior the date events were set. Smoke that LSD laced-cigarette man.
It is also interesting to view Leo's character as the first test subject in that nefarious mindfuck game, a failed subject perhaps.
If the theory is wrong, then even so the doctors, psychs and orderlies at Ashcliffe Hospitall, (Ashcliffee being an interesting name given the Water/Fire symbolism throughout film , burning houses, frozen corpses in Dachau & constant flood , rain, glasses of water emphasised) , have very poor professional accountability towards a vulnerable, violent patient due to Leo's character, Teddy, hanging off of sheer cliffs and doing other extremely dangerous shit whilst observed from a distance. Whole island is bugged it seems as people appear at the perfect time to prod Teddy in the right direction, and eventually towards the lighthouse.
They did things different in the 1950s, because either way, Leo's character is fucked over, lied to and gaslit to either become a CIA puppet or a test rabbit by Psychiatrists and mental health pros.
I absolutely love Ted Levine's speech to Teddy during the drive back in the jeep, sums up the control, manipulation and aggression in the film (a director as great as Scorsese himself making commentary perhaps that this is what a film director does too), the CIA or the Psychiatric approach either way =
'Warden: Did you enjoy God's latest gift?
Teddy Daniels: What?
Warden: God's gift. Your violence.
[Daniels looks at him blankly]
Warden: When I came downstairs in my home, and I saw that tree in my living room, it reached out for me... a divine hand. God loves violence.
Teddy Daniels: I... I hadn't noticed.
Warden: Sure you have. Why else would there be so much of it? It's in us. It's what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices, and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor.
Teddy Daniels: I thought God gave us moral order.
Warden: There's no moral order as pure as this storm. There's no moral order at all. There's just this: can my violence conquer yours?'
The Concentration rail carriage waterfall of several frozen corpses also evokes an uncanniness, a memory regarding John Carpenter's The Thing, a frozen Cosmic joke, a violence in actual Modern History that humanity is a tiny part of in this Universe, just waiting to be unfrozen and its shadow of survival roaming the Earth and beyond.
The Violence extends outwards, on forever through spacetime.
END
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