The Narrative Game of Martin Scorsese

Torey 2022-04-21 09:01:07

"Shutter Island" isn't Martin Scorsese's most acclaimed work. Far less famous and well-received than works such as Raging Bull. Watching it with a terrifying heart, apart from the disgusting and horrifying individual scenes, I can't help but be a little disappointed.

Spoiler alert

. I personally think that the biggest highlight of "Shutter Island" is its narrative style. The most important thing in text analysis is not what kind of story the text tells, but what kind of way to tell the story. Take advantage of the movie, you can also try to see it this way. Director Martin played an unexpected narrative game with us. A normal movie has only one set of narrative modes, and may have several different main lines, but they all lead to an event, a story, or a truth. This is the normal expectation of audiences for movies, and it is also our reading habits. The special feature of "Shutter Island" is that at the beginning of the film, the director brought the audience into a predetermined narrative mode that meets the audience's psychological expectations, but with the development of the story, the layers unfolded, and the final direction was another A narrative that is the opposite of the opening story and goes against the expectations of the audience. It's just a bunch of dominoes. At the beginning of the movie, the director and the audience worked together to knock down the first one, and we'll just wait and see how it goes. But later you found that all the dominoes did not fall in the direction you expected, but fell in the opposite direction.

I disagree with a point of view on the Internet, that the two stories of this film are reasonable, and are specially set by the director, allowing the audience to choose which statement they are willing to believe. The second narrative I personally believe is really just a role play. Teddy was sober, but his sobriety meant he had to accept all his pain, and he'd rather be dealt with than live with the memory.

In fact, "Shutter Island" and "Memento" tell similar stories, but the difference between them lies in the way they are told. Memento shatters an entire chronological story into 45 episodes. The clip is presented in the form of a head-to-tail cross. The whole movie feels like a broken puzzle full of mysteries. Shutter Island, on the other hand, is progressive, gradually overturning the existing narrative content as the story progresses. But this narrative method has its inherent flaws. In such a narrative method, the advancement of the story line and the grasp of the rhythm are crucial. The amount of information is too much, the audience can't receive the information, and it's over before it can be analyzed. If you are slow, you will feel impatient with the fog of suspense that spreads all over the sky. That's why watching the middle and end of "Shutter Island" makes me want to doze off a bit.

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Extended Reading
  • Al 2022-03-23 09:01:07

    Do you want to live like a cool animal, or die like a good person?

  • Kaya 2022-04-24 07:01:01

    The debate and research on the two endings will last for a long time, but no matter which one is established alone, it will weaken the mysterious feeling of the film.

Shutter Island quotes

  • Dr. John Cawley: It's my job to treat the patients, not their victims.

  • Dr. John Cawley: Sanity's not a choice, Marshall. You can't just choose to get over it.