Shutter Island : CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORCESE. *Case Closed*

CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORCESE. *Case Closed*

Excerpts from the book's chapter on Shutter Island. (my bold and italics)

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Martin Scorcese - I took it at face value of a man who's going on an island to find this woman who is lost, who has left, escaped. And then its not about that. And then its about something else. Then its not about that, either.

Interviewer (?) - In reality, if there is a reality in this movie, he's a federal marshal. And that portion of the movie where he comes to the island, is that real?

MS - No, that doesn't ever happen.

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? - So is it fair to say that this entire movie is only that character's reality? There is no island reality at all?

MS - I think ultimately in the top room it's real. When they explain it all to him.

? - Oh, really?

MS - A lot of people choose not to see it that way. They become so invested in the way DiCaprio played it that they don't believe he's crazy even at the very end, when he says, "My name is Andrew Laeddis and I killed my wife in the spring of '52." They just don't believe him. And that's what the beauty of it for me was, that he takes responsibility for his violence, for his violence in the war, too.

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?- But he did kill his wife.

MS - Oh yeah. That we know.


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? - Did you at all look at Titicut Follies, Fred Wiseman's movie about the criminally insane.

MS - ...I knew it very well..... And the other thing was that Dr. James Gilligan, who was our technical adviser, was one of the men who went in after Bridgewater (the prison-hospital where Wiseman's film was shot) was exposed. He was part of the group that revamped Bridgewater and other places. And he pointed out that Ward C is actually a smaller version of the places he knew at Bridgewater. Pretty horrifying.

? - So that reality has infected his imagination.

MS - Very much so. However, Dr. Gilligan did say that he many times worked out scenarios with the patients and acted out different scenes for different lengths of time. I guess psychodrama is what you would call it. But even more intense.

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MS - The directorial problems in the picture were interesting.... Everybody knows what's going on. Everybody except Leo..... But you're right, he's not rooted in reality. By the time you get to that cave, with Patricia Clarkson, his pretended reality has gone completely.


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Re: CONVERSATIONS WITH SCORCESE. *Case Closed*

Amen.


MS - A lot of people choose not to see it that way. They become so invested in the way DiCaprio played it that they don't believe he's crazy even at the very end, when he says, "My name is Andrew Laeddis and I killed my wife in the spring of '52." They just don't believe him. And that's what the beauty of it for me was, that he takes responsibility for his violence, for his violence in the war, too.


^This.

Hard to argue with that.

Sir Guy Grand-I like school of Rembrandt
Youngman Grand-St.Rembrandt's high

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