Even though it’s early 2010, Scorsese’s latest flick Shutter Island has jumped out as one of the greatest films so far. It’s an adaptation of the book of the same title by Dennis Lehane, one of my new favorite authors. Lehane’s novels are always a non-stop, mysterious tour-de-force, where all you ever know is that you don’t know anything for sure until you’ve turned the last page.
Lehane’s books are always about much more than just a great mystery, however, and in that regard, Scorsese has succeeded masterfully. From the first scene, you are U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (played perfectly by DeCaprio), who comes with his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo in fine form) to the institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. They’ve come to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, an inmate who has gone missing as though – according to one of the head psychiatrists (Ben Kingsly, a marvelous mixture of creepy and earnest) - “she evaporated right through the walls.”
Shutter Island is full of twists and turns, and you’re not going to get any spoilers here. Suffice to say, the film (like the novel) is a musing on what counts as real, and what it means to be insane. It’s about the fact that each of us lives a story in which we’re the main character, and how we all interpret what happens around and to us so that it fits our picture of reality.
In that sense, each of us is at least a little bit crazy. Just like inmate Andrew Laeddis (whom you’ll meet in the film). The same day we saw the film, we read Jeremiah 23:7-8:
“So be ready and watch carefully. The time is approaching, coming ever so close when no one will say any longer, ‘as the Eternal One lives, who freed the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.’ Instead, they will say, ‘As the Eternal one lives, who ended our exile and gathered the descendants of Israel out of the north and out of all other countries where He had scattered them.’ Then the Israelites will live in their own land.”
The Israelites lived according to the story of their ancestors. Their current reality was defined by the the God who had always been active in their history, and their future was (pre)determined by the character, the nature, of that same God.
Shutter Island reminded me that I can choose to live by my own script, or I can choose to participate in the story that began with “Let there be light.” Only one is true.
