Shutter Island...Good or Bad?

I am not usually a big fan of movies because the endings are usually not so great. There is nothing worse than watching a movie for two hours and then being left with an inconclusive ending. I bring this topic up because last night I watched the movie, Strangers. Those of you who have seen it before understand what I mean about a terrible ending. It is a horror film and a young couple decides to go to the man’s childhood summerhouse one night after a wedding they attend. The couple arrives at 4:00 A.M. and soon after getting there they hear a knock on the door. Well, one thing leads to another and eventually a group of two girls and a guy stab the couple and leave them lying in the house. The next morning two high school boys come to the house to distribute some Christian literature and when they see the door left open, they decide to come in. The boys find the couple and the movie ends with the boy going to touch the dead girl and just before he does, she lets out a blood-curdling shriek. The movie then ends and we have no idea what this means. This type of ending is extremely frustrating and annoying. Thankfully however, the ending to Shutter Island was much more interesting. The ending to Shutter Island was perfectly ambiguous and open to interpretation. At the very end of the movie, Laeddis tells Chuck, “a place like this can make you wonder: live like a monster or die a good man.” It is easy to tell that the ending of this movie is so good because it led to an entire discussion in our class about what Laeddis really meant or what he wanted to imply. I personally think that when he makes this intellectual quandary he pretends to have relapsed again even though he actually remembers everything. I think he wanted to get the brain surgery to forget his terrible past—the death of his wife and kids. He knowingly pretended to have forgotten about his fantasy so that Dr. Cawley would forever take away the memory of that terrible day, and he would not have to suffer the mental torment. However, the genius of Martin Scorsese is that I can understand other people’s interpretations and I can clearly see why they came to a certain conclusion. Like Strangers, the movie sparks debate when it is over. However, the debate after Strangers was more focused on questioning who on earth decided to have that ending to what was actually a decent movie. On the other hand, Shutter Island sparked an interesting and intellectual conversation where people could enlighten their peers with their own analysis and reasoning. I love the debates that we are able to have in English class. I think that we are now reaping the benefits of having so many during last year and this year. At first everyone was a little nervous about the debates, then it turned into a vicious circle of hate where people just wanted to earn their points, but now I think it is truly an intellectual conversation. Because of the practice we have put in, people are not afraid to share their own unique perspective and now the debates are not just filled with miscorrelating remarks made with the sole intention of earning points. English class is very interesting and I look forward to the topics of discussion each day.