MK Themes in Shutter Island?

[American Dream]

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/mov ... ter_island

Shutter Island

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Williams, Mark Ruffalo
Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese makes movies as if his life depends on it, never skimping on ferocity and feeling. From Mean Streets to The Departed, Scorsese’s crime films turn the genre on its empty head, shaking out the clichés to uncover the violence of the mind. His latest, Shutter Island, sizzles with so much nerve-frying suspense that it’s hot to the touch. The time is 1954. The place is Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, located off Boston Harbor on a remote island that’s locked as tight as Alcatraz. A Category 5 hurricane is brewing as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), ferry in to capture Rachel Solando, a killer of her own children who’s escaped from her cell. The Gothic terror kicks in when the storm literally breaks down walls and the patients run amok, along with their darkest secrets. See it twice and double your fun. Just don’t expect your head to stop spinning.

Cinema is in Scorsese’s DNA, so movie lovers can play a game finding references that extend through film noir (Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past), horror (Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim), war trauma (Karl Malden’s Time Limit), phantasmagoria (Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor), Hollywood’s version of asylum life (Anatole Litvak’s Snake Pit) and the terrifying real thing in Frederick Wiseman’s landmark documentary Titicut Follies.


You don’t need to know any of these films to appreciate Shutter Island, since Scor sese reshapes them into something uniquely his own. But those references tip you off that the director is hunting bigger game than thrills. Set in a time of lobotomy surgery, radical drug experiments, mind-control conspiracies, Cold War paranoia and A-bomb dread, the film demands that you stay alert if you want to stay ahead of the bombshell climax. No hints, figure it out yourself.

DiCaprio, in his most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet, is the vessel Scorsese uses to lead us through the film’s laby rinth. Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel by Laeta Kalogridis (Pathfinder), the twisty — maybe too twisty — script lets us know Teddy is a hard-drinking World War II vet with a quick fist. And flashbacks to his strained marriage to Dolores (Michelle Williams) show equal trauma at home. But mostly we see Teddy during his four days on Shutter Island. Seasick on the ferry in, Teddy tries to get to know his new partner (Ruffalo is reliably superb). The byplay between these two gifted actors rewards careful attention.

On the island, the marshals meet Ashecliffe’s head man, Dr. Cawley, played by Ben King sley with just the right blend of wry wit and menace. To Cawley, everyone is a potential patient. His eyes seem to be everywhere. The great Max Von Sydow has the role of Dr. Naehring, who brings with him the aura of Nazi threat. It doesn’t take long for Teddy to figure nothing is what it seems.

It takes a hurricane to knock down barriers. Teddy’s meeting with the patient Noyce (the excellent Jackie Earle Haley) shakes him, as do his two encounters with the murderous Rachel, played by two exceptional actresses, Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson. DiCaprio’s scene in a cave with the terrific Clarkson is one of the film’s dramatic highlights. It puts the audience in Teddy’s position, caught between reality and hallucination.

With the help of cinematographer Robert Richardson, production designer Dante Ferretti, music supervisor Robbie Robertson and editing whiz Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese holds us in a vise-like grip. The climactic scene won’t be the only thing that leaves you shattered. Scorsese makes dark magic in this mesmerizing mind-bender. No one who lives and breathes movies would dream of missing it.

***

A trailer is viewable at the official site here.

[norton ash]

Looking forward to seeing it. Travers' review is the usual blowjob.

Strung-together quotable blurbs and sound bites. He's got to be the worst high-profile reviewer working, and that's saying rather a lot.

[operator kos]

re: the thread title, I did get that sense from what I've seen of it so far. I didn't know it was set in the 50's, but I like that... a chance for people to see what passed for psychiatry then. Modern day MK stories in pop media, like Dollhouse, tend to get a bit too "woo"... it's all hi-tech and sexy. Give people a chance to see the brutality of people being strapped down with leather restraints on a cold iron slab and subjected to electroshock... a bit more unnerving, might make them think or at least feel uncomfortable.

[Nordic]

I'll see anything Scorsese makes. Although I have to admit I've missed a few since I've had kids. Hard to watch a super-violent 3 hour movie after the kids have gone to bed. And I never go to theaters any more. Still haven't seen Avatar.

[MinM]

I'll see anything Scorsese makes...

Here ya go

Scorsese eyes new fare for Taxi Driver | Film | guardian.co.uk

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are said to be planning a remake of the seminal 1976 film, with Lars von Trier as a new collaborator

* Xan Brooks
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 February 2010 11.16 GMT

Ride of his life … Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

In what is surely the most bizarre rumour to emerge from this year's Berlin film festival, it is whispered that Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are preparing a remake of Taxi Driver, their 1970s tale of a man who stood up, saw clearly and shaved his hair into a mohawk. Only this time, it transpires, they may have a fresh passenger on board – Lars von Trier could be riding shotgun...

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver...MKULTRA

rigorousintuition.ca - View topic - Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist'

[RocketMan]

**SPOILER WARNING**

I just came home from the movies, saw Shutter Island. It's a very intriguing premise and it includes very interesting (especially for mainstream) riffing on the power aspects of branding people mentally unstable... Also strong whiffs of Project Paperclip, CIA experiments, mind control, etc...

UNFORTUNATELY, and this is the spoilery material... The finale reveals that the main character of the Federal Marshal is in fact himself a longtime resident of the institution and has himself concocted the conspiratorial aspects of the plot in order to alleviate his guilt stemming from an event in his own life... And the entire movie is basically a radical treatment concocted for the main character. It's a blatantly clichéd device which leaves a stale taste, even with the spectacular music (overseen by Robbie Robertson, no less), superb photography by Robert Richardson and great performances (especially loves Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring).

At best, the result is that the ending simply negates the concerns about the misuse of psychiatry and meddling with the human mind, at worst it ends up further discrediting such concerns. So, I'm a bit disappointed.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Yeah, it would have been the best movie of the year if it hadn't shit the bed @ the end. Atmosphere, visuals and especially acting were all top notch.

[MinM]

**SPOILER WARNING**

I just came home from the movies, saw Shutter Island. It's a very intriguing premise and it includes very interesting (especially for mainstream) riffing on the power aspects of branding people mentally unstable... Also strong whiffs of Project Paperclip, CIA experiments, mind control, etc...

UNFORTUNATELY, and this is the spoilery material... The finale reveals that the main character of the Federal Marshal is in fact himself a longtime resident of the institution and has himself concocted the conspiratorial aspects of the plot in order to alleviate his guilt stemming from an event in his own life... And the entire movie is basically a radical treatment concocted for the main character. It's a blatantly clichéd device which leaves a stale taste, even with the spectacular music (overseen by Robbie Robertson, no less), superb photography by Robert Richardson and great performances (especially loves Max von Sydow as Dr. Naehring)...

Scorsese and Robertson's first collaboration...



and Max von Sydow in Three Days of The Condor.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

...typical CIA-Hollywood confuse-a-tainment...
This movie fictionalizes and blends Plum Island and MKULTRA with a dash of Rachel Corrie.

1) "Teddy," "hard-drinking," "off Boston" "1950s grim psych ward"
= Sen. Ted Kennedy chaired the brief Senate hearings on MKULTRA in August, 1977.

2) "Hurricane allows danger to escape island institution and its Nazi."
= Plum Island animal disease/biowarfare lab opened in 1956 right off the shores of Connecticut and Long Island which lost power and spewed contamination into Hurricane Bob on August 18, 1991. Lyme Disease escaped in 1975-76. West Nile Virus escaped in 1999. Other stuff other times. Plenty of decoy movies like 'The Tic Code.'
Another decoy movie of the Hurricane Bob disaster was Michael CIA Crichton's/Steven CIA Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park,' 'little misquitos can turn into big out-of-control monsters.'

3) "Ashecliff"
= fallout - from Plum Island, like Lyme Disease, West Nile Virus, who knows what else...

4) "Dr. Cawley"
= cow (Plum Island test subjects, tons of contaminated manure into Long Island Sound, techs actually made steaks from them)
= caw of a bird (birds picked up contamination from Plum Island and spread it across the US)

5) "Island's Nazi"
= Plum Island and its infamous Lab 257 were begun with the assistance of Paperclip Nazi, Dr. Erich Traub.
A decoy novel called 'The Secret of Santa Vittoria,' was published in 1966 about Traub's role+WWII Japanese gold recoveries, another combo decoy story job like this psyops movie.

6) "Destroyed building," "Rachel," the dangerous child-killer.
= Rachel Corrie meme-reversal+negative framing.
The real Rachel was a young American peace activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while trying to save Palestinian homes from destruction.
The USG has been trying to dilute the political movement reinforced by this accidental martyr by using her name wherever possible - 'Rachel Getting Married,' saturation exposure of Jennifer Anniston who played "Rachel" on tv sit-com, 'Friends,' etc.

[nathan28]

6) "Destroyed building," "Rachel," the dangerous child-killer.
= Rachel Corrie meme-reversal+negative framing.
The real Rachel was a young American peace activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 while trying to save Palestinian homes from destruction.
The USG has been trying to dilute the political movement reinforced by this accidental martyr by using her name wherever possible - 'Rachel Getting Married,' saturation exposure of Jennifer Anniston who played "Rachel" on tv sit-com, 'Friends,' etc.

Friends started airing 22 Sept 1994. Rachel Corrie was 15 and living in the US. She flew to Israel in 2003 and died that year as you mentioned. Friends only aired for a year afterward. Are you earnestly suggesting that a single teenager was targeted for assassination by a depraved residential policy that gives no care for whom it rolls over nearly a decade before the second-degree murder in question? On edit, is the suggestion rather that ten years of propaganda planning went into said murder? Please explain how this in any way differs from either a bizarre ex post facto argument or some twisted strain of Agrippa's magic-by-correspondence.

And besides the fact that Lab 257 is worth actually knowing about (unless it turns out to be utter LaRouche nonsense), and now you've buried it in KWHese, and besides the fact that this movie is another tired rendition of Spoiler:"the people investigating the mental institute ARE ACTUALLY THE PATIENTS!!!" theme that Hollywood trots out every ten years or so (it's a slow-flowering perennial)--no CIA-USG-Disney involvement necessary--which has its roots in the 18th Century or so (see The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade), and since I feel equally entitled to nonsense, what do you make of this?

Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddle and sat on them. Laban felt all about the tent, but did not find them. And she said to her father, “Let not my lord be angry that I cannot rise before you, for the way of women is upon me.”

(she did it for the lulz)

[barracuda]

Spoiler:You don't get it nathan - the phenomenon Hugh is describing is not a pre-cognative keyname hijacking (P-CKNH), as you seem to think. Rather, Aniston's career as a post-Friends supermarket checkout tabloid queen (P-FSCTQ) was facilitated by the spooks in order to culturally dilute Corrie's name by inference and interference. You have to admit, it does explain the Aniston's inexplicably continuing popularity in the face of absolutely zero actual talent or achievements.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

I wrote a review of this movie regarding how MK themes are explored and then watered down. I tried to make it a non-spoiler review:

Shutter Island: The Life of the Mind
http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -mind.html

[FugitiveInitiate]

Mind control and understanding Shutter Island
By Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writer

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish ... 5620.shtml

Feb 25, 2010, 00:22

To understand Martin Scorsese’s well-crafted psychological thriller Shutter Island, viewers should do an Internet search on the following three terms: MK-Ultra, Manchurian candidates, and Operation Paperclip. For the extended value-added search, throw in the combination of “CIA” and “LSD.”

Shutter Island is being released at a very propitious time. Just look at last Saturday’s front page of the New York Times. Above the fold we have two related stories, the first, under the inaccurate headline “A new report, a new verdict, in terror fight.” A more accurate title would read “U.S. government and Obama administration reaffirm Bush administration commitment to torture.”

The post-World War II U.S. administrations and its rising security-industrial complex covertly embraced torture and secret dosing of unsuspecting people with psychedelic drugs to control their behavior and create assets and assassins during the Red Scare. Now, overt torture done in the name of “fighting terror” has been embraced by the administration of Mr. “Hope and Change.”

The Times announced that the recent government report that exonerated “ . . . the lawyers who gave justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics” officially “ . . . brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.”

This means the first modern nation that banned torture in its Constitution now officially endorses torture by redefining “cruel and unusual punishment.”

J.S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John Yoo, now a professor at the University of Califormia, Berkeley, serve in the renewed roles of Operation Paperclip Nazi war criminals brought to the United States following World War II. There is little difference between Bybee/Yoo and von Braun/Strughold.

Werner von Braun got a pass from being hanged at Nuremberg because he was useful tthe U.S. military, and later the space, industries. Hubertus Strughold, the father of U.S. space medicine, was directly responsible for the inhumane torture of human subjects at Dachau.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Edward Daniels, was at the liberation of Dachau, and discovered a Paperclip Nazi on Shutter Island continuing to experiment on human subjects, only now with the sanction of the U.S. government. Only a frontal lobotomy will silence his quest for truth.

Our new mass frontal lobotomies come by way of the mainstream media with imprecise headlines and official acceptance of unacceptable government decisions. Torture by any other name, or sanctioned by a memo, is still torture.

The second front page Times article headlined “F.B.I. Shuts Book on Anthrax Case, Fatal to Five in 2001” gives us the government’s version of “the lone gunman.” Dr. Bruce E. Ivins is a minor-league version of Lee Harvey Oswald. We’re to believe that he, and he alone, sent the trillion-spores-per-gram Ames strain silicon impregnated U.S. military grade anthrax through the mail.

Nowhere in the article will you find mention of Battelle Memorial Institute, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The Times reported earlier on Battelle’s “Project Jefferson” and “Clear Vision,” and curious characters like William C. Patrick III and Ken Alibeck. Alibeck is the former number two man in the Soviet’s illegal biochemical program who consulted at Battelle with Patrick, another Battelle consultant who wrote a paper on sending anthrax through the mail.

Readers might want to Google Battelle, the security-industrial complex’s favorite non-profit, and their Shutter Island-like facility in West Jefferson, Ohio. The FBI originally told the Free Press that they were looking at Battelle in West Jefferson, and the profit motive of a newly-formed company that stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of anthrax vaccines.

We’re now to believe that it was Ivins, according to the Times, “a biodefense expert who cast blame on an alternate personality called ‘Crazy Bruce’” and anyone who doesn’t believe this story will be called the “C” word: conspiracy theorist.

Ivins, like Edward Daniels in Shutter Island, had his flaws and makes a perfect patsy for the “lone mailer” theory. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, allegedly stalked two women who were able to confirm that it was “Crazy Bruce,” his other personality, who sent the letters. As the Times dutifully reported, “‘Crazy Bruce,’ who surfaces periodically as paranoid, severely depressed, and ridden with incredible anxiety.”

Just like the movie Shutter Island, there’s a “Rule of 4” coded message that Ivins left, according to the FBI. The Times noted, that “Ivins embedded a complex coded message in the notes that he mailed with anthrax in 2001. The coded message, based on DNA biochemistry, alluded to two female colleagues with whom he was obsessed.”

So says the FBI; so reports the New York Times. The government also initially denied they brought Nazi war criminals into the United States, and that there was a secret harassment campaign against U.S. citizens called COINTELPRO. And, that they were dosing unsuspecting people with LSD and BZ and other psychedelic and mind-altering drugs. We should all see Shutter Island and shudder at the fact that it’s closer to the truth than we’ll ever get in corporate-controlled newspapers.

Bob Fitrakis is Editor of freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

[Burnt Hill]

spoiler alert, sorry waugs-I dont know, my son and I left the theater discussing whether he really was a long time inmate, or whether they had thorougly brainwashed him into believing he was. Dont know anyone else who had that take though.

[waugs]

Hey! give a little warning when you're about to post a spoiler!

I dont know, my son and I left the theater discussing whether he really was a long time inmate, or whether they had thorougly brainwashed him into believing he was. Dont know anyone else who had that take though.