Memory and Astonishment in Shutter Island

Abstract

Scorsese’s film Shutter Island quickly attracted a very large audience — in the United States it was released in more than 3000 theatres; in France it has had more than 1 million spectators since release in February 2010, almost as many as for Taxi Driver in the 1970s. Its screenplay, based on the bestseller by Dennis Lehane,’ was written by Laeta Kalogridis; its editing, as always, was by Thelma Schoonmaker, and the production designer was, as usual, Dante Ferretti. Reactions to the film have been mixed, particularly in the North American and British press. Shutter Island is a noir thriller set in the 1950s, recounting the complex story of an investigation in a psychiatric hospital on an island in Boston Harbor. This film, like the powerful depiction of 19th-century New York in Gangs of New York, goes against the grain: too much violence, too much romanticized history, too much of everything. It is as if critics find it difficult to admit that popular genres may transcend their assigned limits: a prohibition — of convenience, I would say — is still in effect today, against attributing deep meanings to historical fictions based upon romantic popular novels, and to thrillers or detective movies. All these forms came into existence with novels and short stories by Honoré de Balzac, such as Une Ténébreuse Affaire (A Murky Business) (1841), and by Edgar Allan Poe, such as ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, before entering the life of cinema with some Hollywood productions, and before being conserated by Hitchcock.

It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize […]

Aristotle, Metaphysics