Shutter Island - Charlie

Shutter Island

1.   On the boat in the opening scene you can see handcuffs and chains hanging from the ceiling which shows that it is not a normal boat for transportation, this makes the audience start to wonder where they are going and where they have come from. It causes a strange atmosphere to make us wonder what is going on. The lighting on the boat is very dark which also creates a dark and dreary atmosphere and keeps the audience questioning what is happening. The dark lighting connotes bad/negative thoughts. The island they arrive at is completely isolated with a large wall surrounding it, this makes us wonder what it is and what they are doing there.

2.     Teddy is presented as a very mysterious character as he doesn’t like water and gets confused about misplacing his cigarettes. This makes the audience wonder what is wrong with him as he can’t seem to remember much except that he has seen the island before. The way he speaks of his wife’s death is also very mysterious as he passes her death off as a house fire. As he speaks about his wife, it shows a flashback to them, and then cuts to the water, then back to her. This links to the rest of the film as we find out that he drowned her, which explains his hatred for water and why he quickly said she died in a fire.

3.     The set up reveals to the audience that the two protagonists have a rather awkward relationship. We can see that Teddy doesn’t seem to trust the other man as he doesn’t reveal much information to him. Also, when his partner struggles to remove his gun Teddy stares in disbelief at him because as a trained detective, he should be able to do that pretty quickly. On the other hand, the other man seems to know Teddy better than somebody should if they’ve never met. He asks him questions but seems to know the answer, this foreshadows the rest of the film where we later find out that this man is in on the operation to try to get Teddy to remember killing his wife.

4.     From the opening sequence of ‘Shutter Island’ you can clearly see that this ‘world’ is no happy place where everyone wants to be, it’s quite the opposite. This is evident because the lighting throughout the extract is very dull and depressing. Also, the characters voice tones are very dull and boring, making the audience feel down and depressed which is how the characters feel in the ‘world’. The fact that everybody is carrying guns, and the prisoners are wearing handcuffs shows that it is a very dangerous place to be.

5.     In the extract, you can see that all the guards are on edge, this confuses us as we don’t know what they have to worry about because we see the protagonists as the good guys. However, we later find out that he actually murdered his wife for killing the kids, so they are on edge with guns ready because he is unpredictable. All the prisoners wave or smile at Teddy as he walks passed, this also confuses us as they act like they know him. Later we understand that he is actually a prisoner in the mental asylum and they are trying to get him to remember what he did.

6.     The opening has many typical thriller conventions, such as the mystery with Teddy. Thriller films are usually very confusing, and the story behind Teddy fits this perfectly as we have no idea what has happened to him previous to the boat.