Rene Descartes was a philosopher who introduced a popular philosophical method called Radical Doubt in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes “proposed discarding any kind of belief that could be doubted, [because it] might be false”. In both Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese and The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, the viewers are introduced to characters that doubt the very existence of reality, much like Descartes, and who are drowned in the depths of insanity. Fear, paranoia, and doubt are the main ingredients that make both movies a psychological mind maze that constantly teases the brain in every turn. Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick are both masters in cinema direction and are not regulars in the horror genre. Nonetheless, both have created a product that makes viewers question what it's like to be sane. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate the similarities and differences between Shutter Island and The Shining based on their themes of insanity, isolation, and alcoholism.
The story of Shutter Island revolves around Marshall Teddy Daniels, and his partner Chuck Aule, and their journey to a remote and barren island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an inmate from the mental asylum. The island is home to a fortress-like mental institution, Ashcliffe Hospital, which houses 66 of the most dangerous criminals in the country. From the very beginning, Martin Scorsese introduces the viewers to the theme of isolation. In the opening scene, Scorsese uses the boat ride as a sign that illustrates how the island is being distanced from reality. The viewers are never introduced on unfiltered view of "the real world" outside of the asylum. The only available information about reality beyond t...
... middle of paper ...
...els finds himself trapped in the island due to a hurricane much like how Jack finds himself trapped in the hotel due to a blizzard. Both Shutter Island and The Shining revolve around protagonists that are unreliable. The viewers are introduced to the "heroes” and then to their slow decent into madness. Isolation and insanity are prominent in every scene of both movies, which turned normal and loving fathers into insane and psychotic killers that led both of them to their end.
Works Cited
http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/foldop/foldoc.cgi?Cartesian+doubt
http://faculty.ccri.edu/paleclerc/intro/desc_method.shtml
http://movies.ign.com/articles/107/1070199p1.html
http://www.theauteurs.com/films/3506
http://metaphilm.com/index.php/detail/the_shining/
http://www.houseofhorrors.com/shining.htm
http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2010/02/16/film-review-shutter-island-2010/
In 1992 A 24-year-old man named William Ford Jr. was murdered in cold blood by Mark Reilly with a .22 long rifle in the back of a body shop garage. Strong Island is a film documenting the life of William Ford and his family before and after Mr. Ford’s life was abruptly brought to an end. The film takes place in present time having the siblings, friends, and mother of Mr. Ford speak in depth about the events that occurred the night he was murdered and the impact the events after had on the family.
The island was a “God-Forsaken Place” that was whispered about and its name was known as evil among seafaring men. Rainsford was immediately on guard the minute he entered the island. It was gloomy and deathly dark. Words like blackness, night, evil, and “like a wounded snake” are used, creating a dark mood. The characters are all suspicious and dark, creating a mysterious atmosphere. When Rainsford was being hunted, you could feel a sense of peril. Throughout the entire book, you could feel many different
After the towers collapsed people where trying to get off the island of Manhattan any way that could. With all the tunnels, subways, and bridges closed, there was only one way off the island, by boat. In the documentary, a boat captain tells how people were so desperate to get off the island they were literally jumping in to the water or on to the side of boats. People with every kind of boat were letting people on, trying to get people off the island and help any way they could. There where so many people trying to get off the island, boats where getting so full that they were getting close to flipping or sinking.
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
The second idea of the island archetype is that isolation reduces humans to their most basic tendencies. The absence of law, structure, and order either leads to complete serenity, insight, and innocence, or the opposite: destruction, chaos, and confusion. In both of the stories, the latter is what occurred. One example of this from Lord of the Flies is shown in the quote “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (181). One way this shows complete chaos is how they kil...
The article Why We Crave Horror Movies by Stephen King distinguishes why we truly do crave horror movies. Stephen King goes into depth on the many reasons on why we, as humans, find horror movies intriguing and how we all have some sort of insanity within us. He does this by using different rhetorical techniques and appealing to the audience through ways such as experience, emotion and logic. Apart from that he also relates a numerous amount of aspects on why we crave horror movies to our lives. Throughout this essay I will be evaluating the authors arguments and points on why society finds horror movies so desirable and captivating.
“Why We Crave Horror Movies,” an essay by the legendary Stephen King, explains two challenging concepts to understand: why people like gory horror movies and how people are able to control their darkest desires. “I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better – and maybe not all that much better, after all.” King opens the essay by addressing the hard truth- we are all insane. People have dull lives, and often it’s the little bit of crazy within in us tha...
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a thrilling film filled with mystery and suspense. However, Hitchcock left many unsolved issues at the end of this film. In contrast, when comparing Vertigo to more recent films of similar genre’, mysteries are usually always solved and thoroughly explained by the end of the film. Ironically, Hitchcock’s failure to explain everything to the audience in Vertigo is one of the film’s best attributes. This lack of knowledge allows the viewer to use their own imagination and speculate as to what might or might not have become of certain characters.
Stephen King, a very well-known writer and director, has a passionate voice when it comes to anything dealing with horror. In “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” King calls us out for knowing that we love the adrenaline rush and how we are so captivated by horror movies. He explains how we watch horror movies for the level of fun. King proposes that we go to defy ourselves; to see how far it can push us and that is what makes the experience so interesting. We lock our inner psycho from reality and feed it with the demonic, bloody violence found in horror movies. Doing this suggests that horror movies are our fix for our psychotic thoughts. Stephen King’s “Why We Crave Horror Movies” portrays that we are all insane in some weird way through
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is a film which functions on multiple levels simultaneously. On a literal level it is a mystery-suspense story of a man hoodwinked into acting as an accomplice in a murder, his discovery of the hoax, and the unraveling of the threads of the murder plot. On a psychological level the film traces the twisted, circuitous routes of a psyche burdened down with guilt, desperately searching for an object on which to concentrate its repressed energy. Finally, on an allegorical or figurative level, it is a retelling of the immemorial tale of a man who has lost his love to death and in hope of redeeming her descends into the underworld.
Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” presents the audience a twisted tale of a man named Jack Torrance and his wife Wendy and son Danny, who spend a few winter months in isolation as caretakers of the Overlook hotel. This is no typical horror movie. Viewers are slowly lead though a slow film journey following the Torrance family in their moments of horror and insanity with help from bizarre events connected to the haunted Overlook Hotel.
Like most holiday resorts in America, Amity Island survives on the money made in. the summer season. The Mayor gives in to his own greed and jeopardizes. the islands safety by turning down Brody’s plea to close the beaches. The red herring of the two boys with a cardboard fin makes us relax.
The link between expressionism and horror quickly became a dominant feature in many films and continues to be prominent in contemporary films mainly due to the German expressionist masterpiece Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari. Wiene’s 1920 Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari utilized a distinctive creepiness and the uncanny throughout the film that became one the most distinctive features of externalising inner mental and emotional states of protagonists through various expressionist methods. Its revolutionary and innovative new art was heavily influenced by the German state and its populace in conjunction with their experience of war; Caligari took a clear cue from what was happening in Germany at the time. It was this film that set cinematic conventions that still apply today, heavily influencing the later Hollywood film noir genre as well as the psychological thrillers that has led several film audiences to engage with a film, its character, its plot and anticipate its outcome, only to question whether the entire movie was a dream, a story of a crazy man, or an elaborate role play. This concept of the familiar and the strange, the reality, the illusion and the dream developed in Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari, is once again present in Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island.
In Martin Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) finds himself investigating a missing person case in an insane asylum found on a secluded, mysterious island. As Daniels’s search for the missing patient persists, this case and the doctors of the asylum become progressively more suspicious. In fact, Daniels’s new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) appears wary about their reasoning for being at the asylum as if the patient’s disappearance was merely an excuse to allure the two onto the island. A couple of days later the missing patient is found without the Marshals’ help. When Daniels is ready to leave the island he asks the head doctor where his partner is and the doctor states that Daniels came alone to the island. Baffled by this statement, Daniels is
“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine, some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything’s okay. I don’t make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything’s not okay.” - David Fincher. David Fincher is the director that I am choosing to homage for a number of reasons. I personally find his movies to be some of the deepest, most well made, and beautiful films in recent memory. However it is Fincher’s take on story telling and filmmaking in general that causes me to admire his films so much. This quote exemplifies that, and is something that I whole-heartedly agree with. I am and have always been extremely opinionated and open about my views on the world and I believe that artists have a responsibility to do what they can with their art to help improve the culture that they are helping to create. In this paper I will try to outline exactly how Fincher creates the masterpieces that he does and what I can take from that and apply to my films.