Fans have spent the last few months gushing over the brilliant work of Greta Gerwig in Barbie and Christopher Nolan in Oppenheimer. Gerwig is getting plaudits for taking fans through Barbie Land and questioning subjects like patriarchy without sacrificing laughs. Nolan, meanwhile, helped his audience relive the moral quandary the genius theoretical physicist experienced.
This is a golden spell for moviegoers as Barbenheimer fever hasn’t even properly stopped and they are set to be treated with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon next month.
What makes the movie all the more exciting is the fact that Scorsese is reuniting with Leonardo DiCaprio. The iconic director-actor duo has combined to deliver many hits, including The Wolf of Wall Street and Shutter Island. Let’s deep dive into the magic they created in the 2010 hit.
Martin Scorsese Talks About the Glass Disappearing Scene in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Shutter Island
Shutter Island is one of the best mind-bending movies out there as it leaves fans questioning the true character of Ben Kingsley’s Dr. John Crawley, who dictates the fate of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Teddy Daniels and Mark Ruffalo’s Chuck Aule. The two US marshals try to decipher mysteries surrounding the disappearance of a patient on a remote island.
The neo-noir psychological thriller film does well to underline Martin Scorsese‘s excellent grip on the art of cinematography.
His genius is truly seen (or not seen for that matter) in a scene where Teddy and his partner interrogate some of the patients of Dr Crawley’s asylum.
One woman patient, who had killed her husband with an ax, asks for a glass of water. As Chuck brings her a glass of water, she writes ‘run’ on Teddy’s notepad. In the next shot, we all see Chuck handing her a glass of water. She takes a sip and puts it down before DiCaprio comes back into the frame. Seconds later, the glass disappears. Many fans missed this occurrence and the ones who took notice thought this was an editing failure.
In a chat with Quentin Tarantino for DGA‘s Fall 2019 issue, the director reflected on that scene, stating: “She was rehearsing. But I said, ‘Let’s do that.’ You think there’s a glass there. And hence, the whole story: what’s true, what isn’t true, what is imagined.”
What initially seemed like a continuity error to many was actually a pivotal scene as the supposed error combined with the ‘run’ note truly signified the whole theme of the movie: What’s right and what’s wrong, and who to believe?
Which Alfred Hitchcock Technique Martin Scorsese Used in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Shutter Island?
Scorsese made sure to give the nod to the legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, calling the shot “a very Hitchcock kind of thing.” [via DGA]
As DiCaprio’s character finds himself with more questions than answers as the plot progresses, even the audience gets stuck in the maze through these little shifts (glass disappearance) from Scorsese.
The technique of manipulation of perception through perspective was a common occurrence in Hitchcock’s work. The 1954 classic Rear Window, in particular, uses the trope very well, as both James Stewart’s character L.B. Jeff Jefferies and the audience sit and monitor several events in the opposite building and slowly build their own perspective with a very limited outlook.
Source: DGA
