Shutter Island: Book vs. Movie
Martin Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island is adapted from Dennis Lehane’s 2003 book of the same name. Both follow a U.S. marshal investigating a disappearance at an isolated psychiatric hospital.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
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The last question is not in the book
Near the end of the movie, Teddy asks whether it is worse to live as a monster or die as a good man. That question is absent from Lehane's novel.
Discussing the addition at the 2024 Rome Film Fest, Lehane said he had wanted the story to end with the same paranoia that runs through it. He regarded the book as more open to uncertainty.
How it was adapted
The book was already a tribute to old movies
Scorsese's movie follows the case in Lehane's novel through its final revelation. Lehane wrote the book as a tribute to 1950s pulp movies, and spoke with Scorsese about the older movies behind it.
Their conversations included producer Val Lewton's horror movies and Out of the Past. Lehane said Scorsese recognized influences he had consciously used, then spotted connections to movies Lehane had not seen and sent him copies.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Dennis Lehane
- Year
- 2003
- Pages
- 385Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 9 hr 35 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Tom Stechschulte
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels travels to an isolated psychiatric hospital to investigate a patient’s disappearance. As a storm closes off the island, suspicious staff and unsettling clues make him question what is really happening there.
- Director
- Martin Scorsese
- Writer
- Steven Knight, Laeta Kalogridis
- Year
- 2010
- Runtime
- 2 hr 19 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams
- Genre
- action, Adventure, Crime, crime drama, crime thriller, Drama, horror, Mystery, neo-noir, psychological drama, psychological horror, psychological thriller, Suspense, Thriller
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
A federal marshal and his new partner investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane. Trapped on the island by a hurricane, he is pulled deeper into a mystery that begins to distort his sense of reality.
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