Theater Studies Movie Review

This paper intends to discus two movies, ‘Shutter Island’ and ‘Black Swan’. Both the movies are successful films and gained wide acclamations. Martin Scorsese has directed ‘Shutter Island’ while ‘Black Swan’ is a Darren Aronofsky directed movie. The paper further talks about similarities as well differences between these two movies and several related aspects of these movies.
Insanity is a common issue in both the movies and has been portrayed by the directors in their movies in different forms. Characters of both movies, Shutter Island as well as Black Swan, depicts the evolution of insanity in their behavior. The pitch of both movies seems to move from strong to dramatic. A major variation that appears is the behavior of main characters of both the movies. Teddy Daniels, the main character of ‘Shutter Island’ has a disagreement from others while Nina Sayers, Black Swan’s main character has a conflict with herself.
Leonardo Dicaprio as Teddy Daniels in ‘Shutter Island’ was assigned a task to probe a missing killer mystery in a hospital full of mentally insane criminals. Teddy encounters a number of doubtful things about the people around him and about the incidents taking place around him as soon as he gets deeper in the case. Teddy has been presented as a strong character but Knowing much becomes a major problem for the Teddy as he finds himself in an entwined net of emotions mystery, knowledge and confusion. Director has done a brilliant job in the movie and left everything upon the audience to interpret the things that they see, in their own way.
On the other hand, Nina Sayers who is the main character of ‘Black Swan’ plays the role of a dancer who aspires to be a leading dancer. The dancer was propelled by her instructor who used to inspire Nina to achieve her dreams. Nina was under intense pressure to perform and achieve her long awaited dreams. Nina starts escaping from the reality and develops an imaginary world for her under pressure. She starts thinking of Lily, an imaginary character and keeps thinking to defeat her in the cutthroat competition. Lily thus plays the role of ‘Black Swan’ for Nina who is more dangerous as well as dramatic than her reality, Nina. Nina moves towards the state of insanity after she fails to realize that Lily is just into her imagination and not a real character. Torment
After having observed the above mentioned analysis of duo movies, ‘Shutter Island’ and ‘Black Swan’, it is good to say that insanity is a common aspect that has been portrayed in both the movies though the amount and nature of insanity is a bit different in the both movies. In ‘Shutter Island’, Teddy Daniels starts believing that everyone around him is against him. The movie comes to an end after he admitted his insanity and was admitted to the hospital however at the end of movie, ‘Black Swan’, Nina commits suicide after her performance. Insanity hit at the highest in both the movies and the fate of leading characters finished them after a long suffering. Both the movies ended in a tragic way leaving the audience in a confused state of affairs.