So many people my age feel abandoned by our own older faith heroes. In dire national circumstances, we have watched several of our evangelical heroes abandon the ideals they have taught us–urging us to make alliances with forces hostile to our faith. They have told us that this is loving. They have told us to do this for the good of the people. Is this the voice of God, or the voice of Ferreira?
“What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing.” -Andrew Garfield
Art provides a place for us to deal with our own fears and search for meaning. Entertainment lets us do this together. When we’re trying to figure out one another while also sorting out our own beliefs about right, wrong, belief, doubt, and the transcendent, it looks, from 2016, like we’ve decided the screen is a decent place to start.
The themes of redemptive violence, scapegoating, mimesis, and feuding identities dominate both the films of Martin Scorsese and literary theory of Rene Girard. ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo was Martin Scorsese’s second highest-grossing film ($128M), behind only Oscar-winner, ‘The Departed.’ What first appears to be a classic horror film (voted #7 on Business Insiders Highest Grossing Scary Movies of All Time), turns out to be so much more. A story of violent scapegoating of Girardian proportions.
It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy’s shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.