Thursday, March 10, 2022

We are only here to help you



"Shutter Island" is a 2010 film directed by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring in the lead role. Max von Sydow (a Swedish actor) stars a German "ex"-Nazi doctor. The plot has a number of strange twists and is actually quite interesting. 

The year is 1954 when police officer Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck travel to a remote island housing a maximum security facility for the mentally insane, called the Ashecliffe Hospital. Their mission is to investigate the mysterious disappearence of patient Rachel Solando, but Teddy secretely suspects that much more is going on at Ashecliffe, including MK-Ultra-type experiments with mind control. He also wants revenge on a certain Andrew Laeddis, an arsonist and patient at the asylum who two years earlier killed Teddy´s wife. Both World War II and the Cold War forms backdrops to the story. 

The lead psychiatrist, Cawley, proves uncooperative. So do the other doctors (including Sydow´s character), the staff and the heavily armed police guarding the facility. Strangely, Rachel Solando reappears without any bruises, despite supposedly having been at large on the island during a severe storm. Events become increasingly less logical, and Teddy is plagued by recurring nightmares and bizarre visions (some related to Nazi Germany). Laeddis is nowhere on the island, while Teddy´s main source concerning the mind control experiments, an anti-Cold War activist named Noyce, turns out to be imprisoned in the worst part of the "hospital". Both the German doctor and the warden seem to be Nazis. Finally, Teddy finds the real Rachel Solando hiding inside a cave in a remote part of the island. She confirms that Ashecliffe is indeed used to test brain-washing techniques with psychedelic drugs, and that Teddy´s hallucinations are caused by the drugs being slipped into his food and cigarettes by the hospital staff. 

The dramatic finale and stand-off between Teddy and head shrink Cawley takes place at a lighthouse where the police officer believes that patients who know too much are secretely lobotomized. During the stand-off, Teddy realizes that *he* is Andrew Laeddis, that "Rachel Solando" doesn´t exist, and that his heroic investigation to reveal the evil conspiracy is an elaborate psychological defence mechanism. Actually, Teddy a.k.a. Laeddis is a patient at the mental hospital. Two years earlier, he killed his wife Dolores Chanal (the name being an anagram of Rachel Solando) after she had first drowned their three children. Teddy is indirectly responsible for the children´s death, since he knew that Chanal was mentally unstable but didn´t care. The entire "investigation" was a role play designed to make Teddy realize that his conspiracy theories are fake and illogical, making him face his own guilt. It´s also revealed that if Teddy relapses into his delusional conspiracist worldview, Cawley will have no other option than to have him lobotomized.

"Shutter Island" ends with Teddy pretending to become delusional again, since he can´t live with the insight that he really did kill his wife and (de facto) also his kids. He then voluntarily leaves for the lobotomy department...

I haven´t read the novel the film is based on, but the story can very easily be interpreted as a kind of conspiracy narrative in reverse. Usually, the conspiracy theorist turns out to be right. Here, he is revealed to be a delusional and homicidal maniac quite righfully incarcerated at a remote mental facility. His main "source" is really another madman. The evil head of the Grand Conspiracy, Cawley, turns out to be a progressive psychiatrist who wants to help mental patients by understanding them, rather than chain them for life or give them debilitating medicine (he lobotomizes Teddy very reluctantly under pressure from the other doctors). The somewhat illogical plot of "Shutter Island" is a device to show the viewer the illogical character of conspiracy thinking. And just as conspiracy theorists often fancy themselves being heroes while actually being little nobodys, Teddy LARP-s as a seasoned U.S. Marshal while actually being "Patient 67". (A more peculiar angle is that Teddy feels guily for killing Nazis at Dachau. Why would he feel guilty of that? Is this an oblique way to accuse conspiracy theorists of being pro-Nazi?) 

There is just one problem with this neat scenario. Yes, you guessed it: MK-Ultra was, ahem, real...

Perhaps whatever happened at Shutter Island really was a conspiracy. 


5 comments:

  1. I really liked this movie almost untilöl the very end. Then not so much. But The armosphere in The first half is so perfecr.

    OT
    https://dailystormer.name/why-are-shitlibs-standing-with-ukraine-i-thought-they-wanted-whites-to-die/

    "millions of thin blonde women pouring over The broders". Anglin pouring salt in The wounds of globohomo fat acceptance feminists.

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  2. He does have a point, in his own unimitable way...

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  3. Jag vet att jag antingen har läst boken, eller sett en film som bygger på den, eller båda delarna. Men det känns så länge sedan, så jag undrar om det kanske finns en annan filmatisering som är äldre än 2010.

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  4. Inte enligt Wikipedia. Enligt Wiki är denna filmatisering den enda.

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  5. Då har jag förmodligen endast läst boken.

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