Shutter Island: You Can Never Leave

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

Leonardo Dicaprio stars in Shutter Island.
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Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s suspense thriller, begins with the blast of a fog horn. It’s a warning, and I jumped in anticipation of sinister horrors. The loud thrumbling of music escalates the foreboding sense of doom and gloom.

The swill and swell of the sea make U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) stuck over the commode for most of the voyage to the island. He meets his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) on deck. They are on route to investigate the disappearance of a child murderer at a prison for the criminally insane. Everyone, including the healthcare professionals, Dr. Crawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) and warden (Ted Levine), seems unbalanced in this penal hellhole stuck in the vortex of the Atlantic. And like Hotel California, one of my favorite songs, Leo can never leave!

On a dark barb-wired island, rain flattens Leo’s hair
Warm screams of insanity, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, Leo sees a shimmering light.
Leo’s stomach grows heavy and he upchucks at the sight.

There his dead wife stood in the doorway;
He heard the prison bells
And he was thinking to himself,
'This could be Heaven or this could be Scorsese Hell'
Then she lit up a candle and she showed him the way
There were voices in the fortress corridor,
Leo heard them say...

Welcome to the Prison Shutter Island
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Prison Shutter Island
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here

So Leo called to Dr. Cawley,
'Please bring me my gun
He said, 'We haven't had WMDs here since nineteen thirty nine'
And still those voices are screaming from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the Prison Shutter Island
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
They ain’t livin' it up at the Prison Shutter Island
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Bring your alibis.

Bars on the ceiling,
Torture chambers with mice
And the inmates said, 'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the Leo roast
They stab him with their steely knives,
But was it real or just a cruel hoax?

Last thing I remember, Leo was
Running for the door
He had to take the ferry back
To the place he was before
'Relax,' said Dr. Cawley,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

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