HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — From Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese, and based on the best-selling thriller by Dennis Lehane, comes Shutter Island, a tale of haunting mystery and psychological suspense that unfolds entirely on a fortress-like island housing a hospital for the criminally insane.
The year is 1954, at the height of the Cold War, when U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (three-time Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are summoned to Shutter Island to investigate the implausible disappearance of a brilliant multiple murderess from a locked room within the impenetrable Ashecliffe Hospital. Surrounded by probing psychiatrists and dangerously psychopathic patients on the remote, windswept isle, they arrive into an eerie, volatile atmosphere that suggests nothing is quite what it seems.
With a hurricane bearing down on them, the investigation moves rapidly. Yet, as the storm escalates, the suspicions and mysteries multiply each more thrilling and terrifying than the next. There are hints and rumors of dark conspiracies, sordid medical experiments, repressive mind control, secret wards, perhaps even a hint of the supernatural, but elusive proof. Moving in the shadows of a hospital haunted by the terrible deeds of its slippery inhabitants and the unknown agendas of its equally ingenious doctors, Teddy begins to sense that the deeper he pursues the investigation the more he will be forced to confront some of his most profound and devastating fears. And he realizes that he may never leave the island alive.
Scorsese says it was his first read of the Shutter Island script that hooked him.
“I didn’t know anything about the story and I started reading it at about 10:30 at night and I needed to go to bed because I had to get up early the next day, but I found I could not put the script down and was constantly surprised by the different levels of the story,” he recalls.
He felt an instant link to the story’s mix of classic thriller genres, from shadowy noir to boldface horror.
“This is the type of picture I like to watch, the kind of story I like to read,” Scorsese explains. “Over the years, I think I’ve stayed away from certain kinds of pictures that emulate the style that I find nurturing in a way, but these are the kinds of films I go back to and view repeatedly. I’ve always been drawn to this sort of story. What’s interesting to me is how the story keeps changing, and the reality of what’s happening keeps changing, and how up until the very final scene, it’s all about how the truth is perceived.”
He continues: “But more than the way the story is told or the setting, for me, it’s really about what happens to the character of Teddy, which I found to be very moving. That was the emotional connection.”
Scorsese says he wholeheartedly backed the choice of DiCaprio in the lead role.
“Having worked with Leo on Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed, I thought immediately that he should do this,” he says. “We have a way of working together now and I had faith and trust in him as an artist to achieve the many psychological and emotional states that Teddy has to reach, and to transform throughout. Have I seen him do this before? Not to this level, I think. As he gets older, he goes deeper and deeper.”
DiCaprio says he was convinced as soon as he read the script.
“A lot of things about this character appealed to me,” he explains. “Teddy comes to Shutter Island devoted to solving a mystery and to uncover what is really going on, but he has his own innermost agenda and secrets. He’s in a situation where there’s a lot more to his journey than there at first appears to be. One of the great things about the story is that it’s constantly jarring you. It works on so many different levels; it’s like a giant layer cake.”
“I fell in love with the complexity of Teddy, with his search for the truth, which triggers something in him, and also triggered something in me,” he adds. “I was profoundly moved at the end.”
Watch: Shelter Island Movie Trailer
