This trope, by definition, involves the ‘twist’ ending of a movie. Therefore, there will be what some might consider spoilers in this article. However, I hold that one cannot be spoiled of this twist, and will establish this opinion below.
On Monday, I was unfortunate enough to see Shutter Island. Now, I’d seen a trailer or two and, like many tropers, felt like this concept was . . . familiar. What movies are similar?
- Session 9 (insane asylum; today’s cliché)
- Fight Club (mental illness/unhappiness; today’s cliché)
- Jacob’s Ladder (the famous mental hospital scene; today’s cliché)
- The Sixth Sense (main character is a psychiatrist; today’s cliché)
- Silent Hill 2 (hospital settings; implied mental imbalance; today’s cliché)
- Takashi Shimizu’s Reincarnation (the killer’s implied insanity; the hospital-like appearance of parts of the hotel; today’s cliché)
- Identity (flashes of a mentally-ill prisoner; today’s cliché)
- Memento (written and viewed only by the insane; involves brain injury; might have involved today’s cliché, I couldn’t keep track)
All of the above, including Shutter Island, have one thing in common: The main character is a Tomato in the Mirror. Say that you have a man searching for his wife’s murderer. At the end of the movie, he gathers all the clues and discovers that, all along, the killer was . . . himself! Gasp! Yes, he killed her and then blocked out the memory!
Now, a lot of main characters are reliable; they tell the truth and remember the events of the story pretty well. What they tell us is pretty much what happened. But sometimes, to shake things up, we writers use this thing called an Unreliable Narrator. It’s one of many ways to make the audience think about the story long after they’re done reading/watching. What if the character telling us this story was lying? Or insane?
This isn’t a bad technique at all. People in real life are unreliable, and characters are supposed to be like real-life people. When telling a story, we embellish, lie, forget, make ourselves look good, and so on. Therefore, characters should (or at least can), too.
The problem is that this particular usage (a character is trying to solve a mystery and then turns out to be involved in the answer and also to be unreliable) has officially become a cliché. When did it become a cliché? Twenty minutes from the end of Shutter Island.
Now, DiCaprio’s character’s insanity isn’t hinted at for the first hour or so of the film, but even if the main character isn’t visibly insane throughout the movie, you can imply it and create that sort of environment. Session 9 has a subplot about records of former mental patients, and the entire movie takes place inside an abandoned mental hospital. While the man in Jacob’s Ladder appears mostly normal, flashbacks show the trauma he went through in war and he has nightmares of being wheeled through a mental ward.
This, too, isn’t a bad technique. All the narrative is doing is showing you two separate ideas: the main character is searching for an answer; people go insane. When these two points converge in the form of the Tomato in the Mirror, your brain will click and it will seem to make a lot more sense, at least at first.
The problem with this, though, is that our brains are very well adapted to finding patterns. We’ve seen enough movies (like the ones listed above) that if there’s a mystery, the main character immediately rises to near the top of our suspect list, behind only the mustache-twirling Judge Frollo and the femme fatale.
I went into this movie desperately hoping that they’d invert that somehow. “Yes, it could be diCaprio, but what if it was . . . his wife, who’s still alive!” But instead of providing anything surprising or original, Scorcese chose to adapt a book that falls back on this tired, easy, predictable trope.
The first two hours of Shutter Island are peppered with monologues and The Ring-ripoff dream sequences that all screamed ‘HE’S CRAZY, HE’S THE MISSING PATIENT, THIS HAS BEEN DONE A MILLION TIMES’. And then, still twenty minutes from the end, diCaprio reaches a special room and is informed that he was the patient all along.
Scorcese isn’t a genius. You can’t be a genius and use this trope. I would know, because I’ve used this trope before, and everybody knows I’m not a genius. There are several minor examples throughout the Si trilogy, especially with characters who have amnesia. It’s the entire world-spinning point behind The Singing Game. I wish I could stop using this trope. Heck, it’s a fun trope if you can sneak it past the audience until the last second. But:
If your audience can see a twist coming after seeing the trailer, it’s not a twist anymore, and you should stop using it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to find out that I’m not actually insane, despite the random, nonsensical ‘articles’ (outbursts) carefully placed throughout this site to make me appear insane. (As the clown in We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story said, “THAT’S! COMEDY!”)
The first two hours were peppered with monologues and The Ring-ripoff dream sequences that all screamed ‘HE’S CRAZY, HE’S THE MISSING PATIENT, THIS HAS BEEN DONE A MILLION TIMES’.
About Fiona Canteberry
A novelist from northwest Arkansas, Fiona's range of topics include writing, tropes, and self-improvement. She goes by 'FekketCantenel' online.
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If you walked out on that part, you completely missed the entire point of the film. I suggest you watch the entire thing before writing it off as cliche. You missed the real twist.
I don’t need to sit through the boring slop again; I went and read the Wikipedia article that night. The bit about Matt Damon wanting to get lobotomized was interesting but has been done often enough that I didn’t regret walking out. I can’t find an exact trope for deliberate ignorance, but Ignorance is Bliss comes close.
Other than that, I didn’t see anything special in the summary of the ending.
OK, um. I’m just saying. If you’re going to review a movie, you maybe want to see the whole thing. And relying on a Wikipedia article to give you the nuance of it means you miss an entire level to it. MAYBE he was the murderer, and he relapsed into his fantasy. MAYBE he didn’t relapse into the fantasy, but didn’t want to remember what he did. Or MAYBE he wasn’t mad at all. MAYBE he realized that there was no way he could get off the island, that he was going to be labeled as insane and there was nothing he could do about it. What was particularly well-done with this movie is you can argue either way and make a good case. That was the subtle twist you missed by not seeing those last minutes.
I enjoyed the movie, but I didn’t think it was the best thing I’d ever seen or anything. I think you went into it thinking you know what it’s all about because you dabble in writing yourself and you like to use the word trope. You underestimated it either because you couldn’t grasp the subtlety or because you didn’t see all of it or both.
I’m sure everything you are writing is completely original and totally free of cliche. I wish you luck in your writing career.
Just so you know, the primary focus of these articles isn’t to review the movies but to dissect particular cliches that are extremely annoying.
The layers you mention are interesting but nothing new. In fact, it’s a natural logical thought process regarding insanity. I’ve heard this particular story before and already chewed it down to the gristle; I’ve even written elements of it into my books.
While there might be layers and an interesting sub-twist in the ending of Shutter Island, the movie was so awash in hamhanded dream sequences and boring dialog that I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the philosophical conundrum even if I had stuck around.
I didn’t underestimate this movie. Hell, I over-estimated it. Despite the obvious ending, I thought it might be entertaining on the way. I didn’t expect it to be so head-achingly boring.
Your sarcasm re: my writing is unappreciated. In the article itself, I admitted that I use this cliche several times even though I hate it (I’m not sure why). I also use many, many other, less annoying tropes , partly because it’s impossible not to. Look up ‘Tropes Are Not Bad’ and its counterpoint ‘Tropes are Not Good’. In any case, I’ve been told that I use these tropes in very original and entertaining ways.
Duly noted. I guess I got confused, what with the words “A Review of Shutter Island” being in the title and all. I’m sorry you thought my sincere good wishes were written sarcastically. I, too, was once 21 and wanted to be a writer. Just because my dreams were shattered doesn’t mean I’d like others to suffer the same fate.
As I said, the reviews (while fun to write and always my true, dissected feelings) are not the primary focus of the articles. That’s why it’s the second part of the title, after the Cliches I Abhor part.
Nah, I meant the sarcasm about it all being ‘completely original and totally free of cliche’. Come on, that’s got to be sarcasm, or else I need to explain the Tropes Are Not Bad/Tropes Are Not Good. But I believed the good wishes. Let me know if you want to read anything of mine.
The one thing I’ve got going for me is that anyone can be a writer, even if they (I) have no money or actual hope of ever publishing anything. I don’t know your situation, but I hope you give yourself a chance again.
There are only 7 plots, so no one can avoid a plot cliche.
I can’t believe you couldn’t “keep track” of what was happening in Memento, one of the cleverest movies ever made.
I think with my first book (and definitely with the trilogy), I combined all seven plots so thoroughly that one can’t tell where they intersect. I never liked that leg of writing philosophy, anyway.
Dude, lots of people couldn’t follow Memento. Next you’ll tell me that only morons can’t understand Finnegans Wake.
Also, I’m really sorry for harassing you on that site the other day (under another name). I’ve been going through some rough times and am pretty lonely. I’m over it now, though, and wanted to let you know it wasn’t your fault. See you around.
There’s a trope name for that, too. It’s called Freudian Excuse.