Vera Dika

The remake of memory: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Pedro Almodovar’s The

The history of cinema has given us objectification of consciousness (2012), Skin I notable representations of states of or with more contemporary theorist memory, delusion, hallucination, and Laura Mulvey (1975) who interpreted dream. Cinematic states of conscious- the whole of narrative cinema as the ness arise in early German Expression- objectification of male sexual desire, Live In* ist and Surrealist films, such as in The especially in relationship to the repre- Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet sentation of women. But in our current des Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920) cinematic era, one that arguably be- and Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, gins in the mid-1960s, or early 1970s, 1929). In Hollywood films there are and termed “postmodern” by the critic famous dream sequences, such as in Fredric Jameson (1983), a new form Spellbound (Alfred Hitchock, 1945), of “memory” begins to interject itself or re-creations of dream-like worlds, into the picture, or shall we say, into such as in the classic film noir, Laura the movie. That is, the viewer’s own (Otto Preminger, 1944), or renditions movie memories, not personal ones, of mad obsession, as in Frankenstein mind you, but cultural memories, ones (James Whale, 1931) or Dr. Jekyll and cued by cinematic elements strategi- Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931). cally re-created and recombined by the And in the US avant-garde film, works filmmakers. According to Jameson, this such as Maya Deren’s Meshes of the practice conflates past, present, and fu- Afternoon (1943), and Stan Brakhage’s ture, and puts our very understanding Anticipation of the Night (1958), cre- of history into jeopardy. ate metaphors on dream and percep- Jameson wrote his seminal essay on tive states. Film theory too addresses the cultural condition of postmodern- these concerns with early writings of ism in 1983, and foregrounded one of Hugo Munsterberg, for example, who its constituent features as “pastiche”, or saw the medium of film itself as an blank parody, a technique that affects

JULY-DECEMBER 2014 L’ ATALANTE 43 NOTEBOOK · CINEPHILE DIRECTORS IN MODERN TIMES

Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) / Courtesy of Vértice 360º not only the story and the style of the they may allude, but most importantly, Andalou to Shutter Island, and, for the newer film, but also the “look and feel” to the cinematic strategies and concepts most part, the film Frankenstein to of the image. Since then, the features about the representation of conscious- The Skin I Live In. I have done so not that Jameson chose to address have ness that the directors now re-engage, to claim that Scorsese and Almodo- only become more pronounced in cul- augment, or challenge. var necessarily intend to engage their tural practice. The amount of copying, First to note is that Shutter Island and audiences in a “play” of reference for of “quoting”, “recycling”, “adapting”, The Skin I Live In give rise to cinematic its own sake. Rather, I am interested and “remaking” (Dika, 2003; Constan- memories that may vary among indi- in how the cinematic concerns of the tine Verevis, 2006), for example, as well vidual viewers. Shutter Island could re- older works, ones that had importantly as modes of physical recombination, call, for example, aspects of The Cabinet addressed questions of consciousness such as “sampling” and “remixing,” of Dr. Caligari or The Shining (Stanley and identity at the earlier part of the have intensified to almost all aspects of Kubrick, 1980) for some viewers, while 20th century, are now reformulated and cultural production, from films, to art, The Skin I Live In may reference Frank- re-imagined in the newer films2. to music, to social media (Fowler, 2012; enstein or Eyes Without a Face (Georges Shutter Island is adapted from a 2003 Laederman and Westrup, 2014). These Franju, 1960)1. This quality of variance novel by Dennis Lehane. The result- often varied works, however, must be has been a feature of postmodern pas- ing film bears an interesting relation- looked at within their historical and tiche from the beginning. For Jameson, ship to (at least) two films from cinema aesthetic contexts. As I have argued the quoted elements were both “al- history, primarily because of the way elsewhere (Dika, 2003), an approach to lusive” and “elusive,” often aiding the Shutter Island puts the subjectivity of such a broad-based topic is to look at films’ sense of “nostalgia” in their abil- the viewer into question. In the Ger- individual practices that provide signif- ity to span past works and eras. It is man Expressionist film The Cabinet of icant creative possibilities within the this referencing of past historical time Dr. Caligari by Robert Wiene, for exam- current tendency. In this essay, I will that is now especially interesting since ple, and in Shutter Island, the viewer is look at the work of Martin Scorsese and Shutter Island and The Skin I Live In are immersed in a world where the verac- Pedro Almodovar, two veteran film- also narratively structured as temporal ity of depicted events is held in suspen- makers whose works have previously and visual labyrinths, using the film sion3. And because of Shutter Island’s submitted to the thematic, stylistic, medium’s enhanced ability to traverse visual and aural associative structure, generic, or iconographic reference to time and space through digital editing, one that so privileges the dream mecha- past cinema history. I will be discuss- and to construct a potent visual surface nisms of “condensation” and “displace- ing Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010) and through the reality-altering abilities of ment” (Freud, 2011) —of sensory meta- Almodovars’s the Skin I Live In (2011), computer-generated technology. In this phor and metonymy— it begs at least not only in relationship to earlier films essay I have selected to compare The some comparison to the Surrealist film about states of consciousness to which Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Un Chein Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and

44 L’ ATALANTE JULY-DECEMBER 2014 The remake of memory: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In

Salvador Dali. In both the newer and ducted there as part of a government ing sequence of Shutter Island, the older films we are entering cinematic conspiracy. Teddy traverses the space more standard cues to a subjective vi- worlds where the tension between real of the asylum, in search of Rachel, and sion are removed. From the beginning, and imagination, memory or halluci- in search of “truth”, until he reaches we assume we are watching a series of nation, past and present are of central the lighthouse, only to confront his events from an objective perspective. importance. own truth. Here elements congeal in And even over the course of the film, The dissimilarities between the his- Shutter Island to refer to a Cabinet of when dreams or flashbacks are openly torical films and Shutter Island also Dr. Caligari type plot. The psychiatrist, cued from Teddy’s perspective, we do abound. One of the most obvious that Dr. Cawley (recalling Dr. Caligari), tells not initially realize that they are imbed- must quickly be addressed is the dif- Teddy that it is he, Teddy, who is the ded in an elaborate overall structure of ferent political and formal status of the mental patient. The doctor says that it Teddy’s delusions and hallucinations. works. For example, we We, along with Teddy, must not confuse the his- are locked inside his con- torical placement of The The tactic of combing computer- sciousness, seeing from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and his “point of view”, one Un Chien Andalou, espe- enhanced images with natural that slides across states of cially their inter-war Eu- elements, however, is not always actual perceptions, across ropean setting, their radi- to dreams, memory, delu- cal aspirations, and their clearly distinguishable in Shutter sions and hallucinations. highly disruptive form, Island. Instead it further serves to If we look more closely with that of Shutter Island. at the opening sequence Scorsese’s film is defini- expressionistically create a feeling of Shutter Island, for ex- tively a work of US popu- ample, we come to realize lar culture, and not part of of unease through the tortured that all was not as “nor- the avant-garde. But this environments it creates mal” or “objective” as we is precisely the point. Our had originally expected. interest will be to note We can find hints, visual, which significant cinematic strategies is Teddy who killed his wife because aural, and dialogue cues that on a sec- have been selected from the past works, she drowned their three children, and ond viewing become more evident. which concepts have been sustained, Teddy who imagined the “scenario” we Teddy is clearly agitated in this open- and which still function in important have been watching. All has been a de- ing sequence, making reference to his and challenging ways. We can begin lusion, or more properly, because film physical and mental upheaval, and al- by discussing Shutter Island in the vari- is a visual medium, a hallucination. It is luding to the disturbance that “water” ance of its references and connotations. Teddy who must now be lobotomized. causes him, and later, the disconcerting Shutter Island can in some ways be It is Teddy who is insane. Or is he? presence of “fire”. Both of these are sym- seen as a detective film. This is certainly While there is a narrative similar- bolic allusions to the trauma of Teddy’s the way it begins, and because of the ity between Shutter Island and The children’s death by “water”, by down- costumes and early 1950s era, it might Cabinet of Dr, Caligari, it is perhaps the ing, and the gun Teddy “fired” in kill- even give rise to a film noir4 mood. We cinematic strategy of putting the film ing his wife. Moreover, as in The Cabi- learn, for example, that Teddy Dan- viewer directly into the consciousness net of Dr. Caligari, a distinctive visual iels, played by Leonardo Di Caprio, is of a proposed madman in both films world is constructed in Shutter Island. by his own claim a Federal Marshall, that is most striking. In more conven- Caligari is legendary for its German and we watch as Teddy and his part- tional films, a determining structure Expressionist visual design, where the ner Chuck disembark on a foreboding alerts the viewer to a shift from an ob- inner turmoil of a troubled mind is ob- Shutter Island. The two men enter a jective reality, to a subjective vision. jectified onto two-dimensional painted mental institution where their assign- Dreams, hallucinations, memories, and sets. In similar fashion, the visual sur- ment is to locate a missing patient, Ra- subjective point-of-view shots are set face of Shutter Island is “painted” — chel Solando, a woman who drowned up in this way. And while the flashback only now it is done so digitally—. The her three children in the lake and can- structure of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari clear distinction between objective and not accept her culpability. Since Ra- is so presented, with Francis beginning subjective reality is manipulated here, chel Solando proves elusive, Teddy is to tell his story of the past as the film while the digital imagery is utilized for drawn deeper into the space of the in- opens, we are not initially alerted to its particular properties. stitution, meeting people who tell him the possibility that his narration may For what these properties of the digi- of possible lobotomy experiments con- be unreliable. Similarly, in the open- tal image might be, Gilles Deleuze has

JULY-DECEMBER 2014 L’ ATALANTE 45 NOTEBOOK · CINEPHILE DIRECTORS IN MODERN TIMES

provided some observations. Deleuze whole. He says, “Pull yourself together acters struggle against a rain-twisted describes the digital image as distinc- Teddy”. He then looks out the porthole black forest, where a multitude of rats tive because it presents “the brain-city, to the digitally rendered “ocean” that swarm from a single hole in the rocks, the third eye, replacing the eyes of moves by. Barely containing his revul- or where webs of chain-link fences, or nature”. Scorsese takes this property sion he mutters, “It’s just the water, hospital gratings, or prison-like bars of the digital image to metaphorically it’s a lot of water”. Teddy then climbs encase the characters. Colors and set imply states of interiority. Moreover, to the deck to meet his partner. Chuck design also aid in creating this sense Deleuze notes that the digital image ex- lights Teddy’s cigarette. A quick flash- of an almost tactile, strangely flattened ists as “the object of a perpetual reor- back to a pretty blonde woman —this surface. The color green, for example, ganization, in which a new image can is Teddy’s wife— who died. Teddy ex- pervades the film, hospital green, insti- arise from any point whatever of the plains to Chuck, “There was a fire at the tutional green, and the florescent green preceding image” (Deleuze, 1989: 265). apartment while I was at work”. of nightmares and disturbing interior Scorsese employs the digital image for Is the opening sequence of Shutter design. Browns and tattered whites the purpose of rendering states of con- Island an objective event, or is it part of also rise, ragged and wet along labyrin- sciousness, utilizing its permeable, “ex- a subjective state that can be read meta- thine dungeon-like corridors, and un- foliating”, surface. Although the digital phorically? The film presents a visual derground passages. In the end, these image’s exfoliating effect is frequently surface that keeps a balance between surfaces give the film the feeling of a utilized in popular cinematic practices the two, and that will later complicate fabrication in one sense, as in Caligari, (as were similar effects in the optical the reading of events. When Teddy and but also of an enclosure, of repressed printing, double exposure, and dis- Chuck talk on the deck, for example, a surfaces, and the visually equivalent of solve techniques of the celluloid past)5, digitally rendered ocean rushes by be- a “no way out”. Scorsese mixes the two, blending the hind them. The created image is paint- The presence of “water” and “fire”, filmic and the digital, along with the erly in its flat blue lines, yet cold, aus- however, form the most insistent visual narrative and symbolic elements, now tere, and nearly windless. What’s more, and aural element in Shutter Island. to weave a web that teeters between an the “ocean” seems to separate from the It is the water that eerily comes from objective and subjective reading of the ground, almost declaring itself as a fake. Teddy’s hands, drips in his dreams, and events, and that expressionistically cre- The tactic of combing computer-en- drips from pipes of the building; it is ates a feeling of unease. hanced images with natural elements, water that surrounds the island, and Shutter Island opens on a grey foggy however, is not always clearly distin- that falls from the sky in torrential rain. screen. No object is yet visible through guishable in Shutter Island. Instead it Throughout the film, the presence of the fog. This first image begins an further serves to expressionistically water is also evident in the narrative overall metaphor of “moving into con- create a feeling of unease through the action as the characters ask for water, sciousness”, from a formless state, to- tortured environments it creates. We dive into water, look at the water, and wards form, in search of memories, note, for example, scenes where char- the sound of water spills onto surfaces. in search of truth. Accompanying the foggy image, only the sound of water Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) / Courtesy of Vértice 360º is heard, indistinct but insistent: is it water as it flows from a tap, as it laps against the side of a boat, or cascades from a waterfall? The dim outline of a boat slowly appears, almost lacey in its blackness, approaching from the center of the frame, moving forward. We next see the inside of the boat. Through an open bathroom door, a man is hunched over, heaving. Teddy Daniels vomits into a toilet. What is this metaphor? “Slipping his guts?” Has Teddy been made sick by drugs —or by his own surfacing memories?—. Teddy wipes his face with water from the sink. He looks into the mirror, a mirror reflec- tion, alluding to the splitting of the self that will characterize the film as a

46 L’ ATALANTE JULY-DECEMBER 2014 The remake of memory: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In

a woman’s armpit hair erotically super- imposed in its place. Characters shift, splitting off into a man who rejects vio- lence and a man who lives for it; and separate locations are made continuous by moving from a city apartment to a beachfront in one cut. In Un Chien An- dalou, the scenes proceed irrationally, to impede meaning. The film is meant to imply a dream in its “raw” state, be- fore the process of secondary revision, of interpretation, in waking life. Shutter Island does not maintain this level of assault on logic. Instead it strives for in- terpretation, now through cinematic as- sociative structures that present a shift- ing and permeable surface to the film. Shutter Island develops more like Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) / Courtesy of Vértice 360º a state of troubled consciousness, or set of symbolic symptoms, in the pro- There is too much water. It is, after all, describe the significant mechanisms cess of being interpreted through talk the “water” that killed Teddy’s children, in Un Chien Andalou, noting some of therapy. It is almost as if we are walk- and that now wakes his dreams, and these cinematic strategies, and how ing through Teddy’s unconscious mind pervades his consciousness. He can’t get they have been once again addressed in with him, picking up visual and aural rid of it. The fire is just as insistent. The Shutter Island. clues, ones that can be converted back verbal metaphor to “fire” a gun is literal- Un Chien Andalou is presented to into speech, to find the meaning of his ized in Shutter Island with the repeated the viewer directly as a “dream state”. delusions. Characters like Chuck, who lighting of a match, with the burning It does so by eliminating a mediating is later revealed to be Teddy’s therapist of the apartment, or with a thunder- bracket, and by distorting established Dr. Sheehan, facilitate in this process, as ous and flame-drenched car explosion. formal strategies for cinematic narra- does Dr. Cawley, and the other patients, In Teddy’s dream, “I fired the gun” is tive. The central operating principle of nurses and orderlies, making possible the thought that pervades, and is linked Dali and Buñuel’s film is the irrational the verbalization of Teddy’s search. with another “liquid” metaphor: “I can- and sometimes violent juxtaposition of Here the dream work processes of con- not stop the blood that flowed from physical objects and events by means of densation and displacement are mim- her”. Fire and water, blood and ash in- film editing, as well as the disruption of icked. In addition to the condensed sta- termingle: “It is the fire that caused her narrative expectation through illogical tus of “water” and “fire” noted above — to die, to crumble to ash in my arms, sequencing. In the famed opening of transforming these words, these ideas, the ‘fire’ that I cannot admit to”. This Un Chien Andalou, for example, we see into the cinematic metaphors that is Teddy’s trauma, Teddy’s wound that a close-up of a straight razor as a man embody, repeat, and proliferate their repeats throughout the film. makes the gesture of cutting across associative meaning (“fire” = match And it is here that Shutter Island ap- his thumbnail, and then associatively, = explosion = gun) (“water” = rain = proaches concepts regarding the repre- a shot of the moon as a slender cloud “ocean” = lake)— the mechanism of sentation of the unconscious mind on “slices” across it, and then the cutting displacement is also utilized on many film famously broached by the Surreal- of a woman’s eye with the straight ra- levels of character, story, and dialogue. ists. As I have noted, Scorsese’s film is zor. This type of associative blending, One of the most obvious is the con- a work of popular culture, and so does based on form and function rather than tinued displacement, the slipping and not attempt the disruptive, anti-estab- narrative sense, continues throughout sliding of identities, for example, from lishment attitude of Un Chien Andalou. the film, not always across shots such Teddy, to Andrew Laeddis, to George However, the mechanisms of conden- as described here, but also within shots. Noyce, and from the missing patient sation and displacement, the associa- The shape of ants crawling out of the Rachel Solando, to Dr. Rachel Solando, tive structures of visual metaphor and center of a hand, for example, is echoed to Teddy’s wife Delores Chanal, and metonymy, operative in dreams and in in the shape of a sea urchin dissolving back again to Teddy’s dead daughter psychological symptoms, are nonethe- into armpit hair; or, a man’s mouth first Rachel. As in Un Chien Andalou, identi- less employed in Shutter Island. I will disappears from his face, only to have ties, and personages, do not stay stable

JULY-DECEMBER 2014 L’ ATALANTE 47 NOTEBOOK · CINEPHILE DIRECTORS IN MODERN TIMES

in Shutter Island, nor do the nature of The Skin I Live In by Pedro Almodo- part of a four year old boy. The reason events. Chuck, for example, dies on the var also draws on a composite of films for presenting this account is for its rocks, and then walks again in a sub- from film history, and deals with states straightforward simplicity, for its use- sequent scene; Rachel disappears from of obsession and madness. However, fulness in demonstrating Freud’s the- a locked cell, and then re-enters; Laed- this film does not enter the conscious- ory of the Oedipus Complex (2011) and dis is elusive, and then part of Teddy ness of the main character to the ex- for the references to other films from himself. Dreams, memories, hallucina- tent of Shutter Island. Instead, the film film history that it inspires. tions also combine, losing their distinct originally seems to be shot from an I had a friend named Liz who was boundaries and blending, until finally, objective perspective, and with a fairly the mother of a four-year old boy the truth is found —or so it seems—. conventional story structure and use of named Eddie. Liz had never read Scorsese uses this ambiguity in Shut- cinematic space. As the film progresses, Freud, nor had she in-depth knowledge ter Island to ultimately of his theories, but Liz address one of his own re- loved telling stories of Ed- peated cinematic themes: Scorsese’s film is a work of popular die’s development and of redemption. After Teddy the funny things he said has admitted his culpabil- culture, and so does not attempt and did. Liz told me that ity, he seems to revert to the disruptive, anti-establishment one day she was taking a madness. Knowing that the shower when Eddie came orderlies will lobotomize attitude of Un Chien Andalou. into the bathroom riding him, Teddy then makes a However, the mechanisms of on his toy bike. He pulled choice. He states, “Which open the shower curtain, would be worse, to live a condensation and displacement, looked up at his mother monster or to die a good for a while, and then left. man?” and then voluntarily the associative structures of visual He soon returned, pulled walks away with the order- metaphor and metonymy, operative open the curtain, and lies. In an earlier scene Dr. said, “Hey Mom, can I see Cawley’s had admonished, in dreams and in psychological that again?” Liz said that “Sanity is not a choice, Mar- symptoms, are nonetheless she stood there soaking shall. You can’t just will wet as her son contem- to get over it”. Should we employed in Shutter Island plated her body. Then Ed- now assume that Teddy, die said, “Hey Mom, what in making a moral choice, happened to your penis?” in knowing the difference between right however, a pattern of flashbacks and Liz tried to explain about boys… and and wrong, is sane? The redemption dream states ensue, bringing us into a girls… but Liz said that for weeks af- of the character through the making of tortured set of past events. Moreover, terwards the conversations with Ed- a moral choice can be seen in many of The Skin I Live In is often digitally ma- die continued about penises and penis Scorsese’s films, from Charlie in Mean nipulated to enhance the naturalism of size. Eddie wanted to know how big Streets (1973), to Travis Bickle in Taxi the image, confronting us with a glossy, the elephant’s penis was, how big the Driver (1976), to Jesus in the Last Tempta- sensual surface, while the costumes, set turtle’s penis was, etc. From a Freud- tion of Christ (1988)6. In Teddy’s case, the design, and props in the image help us ian perspective, Eddie had suffered a possibility of his being sane reconstructs understand aspects of the story, and trauma, a fear of perhaps losing his the story of the film. Perhaps Teddy has our implication in it. This is a crucial own penis, of having it cut off, and was been drugged as part of a government- dynamic in The Skin I Live In since now engaging in these conversations funded conspiracy to fabricate amoral the film conflates potent psychologi- to re-assure himself. “monsters” for government use. Teddy cal, sexual, and social concerns, drawn Castration is the central trauma in is certainly traumatized by his past, dam- from a mélange of Freudian theory and The Skin I Live In, and it is arguably aged by it, but he is not insane. In this contemporary issues, and does so in a a fear that lies at the basis of male in- way, the final reading of Shutter Island, way that allows the film to enter our fantile discoveries of sexual difference. like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, teeters consciousness, and our past traumas, For our discussion, it is interesting that between a psychological interpretation and memories, with insistence. Eddie’s story takes place in a shower, (madness), and a realistic interpretation To begin our discussion of The Skin bringing us memories of Alfred Hitch- (government conspiracy) of events. I Live In I will offer an anecdote. This cock’s Psycho (1959), and of the knife account involves the early stages of un- (what “happened” to your penis?) used *** derstanding of sexual difference on the to “punish” the woman for her crime

48 L’ ATALANTE JULY-DECEMBER 2014 The remake of memory: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In

(her lack?). Psycho’s shower scene it onto the corroding visage of his own to be the case, as Vera is presented with portrays a symbolic castration, and a disfigured daughter. And of course, in beautiful skin. Resplendent, smooth, story that the cinema has often told Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll splits and pore-less, it reflects the light and us. The Skin I Live In actively alludes off into two men, losing his singular- shines through to us. But her skin is not to a number of such films, ones that ity, and his individual appearance, to the only part of the film that glows. Not similarly use metaphors of castration become separate entities. only do the sleek locations have this to tell their story. Beginning in seem- In all these films, there is the ques- look, but the very skin of the film has ing compliance with those earlier films tion of altering the body and somehow been presented in high gloss sheen, one and their symbolic stance, The Skin I changing the soul, changing the answer that ironically draws us into uncompro- Live In then becomes more explicit in to the question “Who are we”? Are we misingly uncanny material. its approach to the material. defined by the limits of our bodies, our It is now the “skin” of the film that The Skin I Live In tells the story of brains, our faces, and our genitals? And touches us, the skin of light that has a mad doctor, Robert Ledgard, who it is here that Almodovar returns to formed the image that now reaches us conducts experiments on his patients one of his repeated themes: the tension (Barthes, 2010: 82). by replacing their skin by a process of between sexual and gender difference. This, along with the potent psycho- “transgensisis”. He mutates pig skin As often noted, Dr. Frankenstein at- logical material presented, The Skin I with human skin, creating a tougher tempted to “play God” in transforming Live In envelops us. To complete the organic material, one not subject to dead flesh into a living being, deform- encounter, the methods of voyeurism burns, or to puncturing, cutting. Since ing the biblical story of Adam and Eve. presented in Psycho, for example, and Robert’s experiments go beyond ac- Robert, in The Skin I Live In, again “plays elaborated on by film theorists such as cepted medical practices of the time, God” by transforming Adam into Eve by Laura Mulvey, alert us to the psycho- they call to mind such cinematic mad means of a sex change operation. sexual dynamic involved in taking the doctors as those depicted, for example, In The Skin I Live In, Robert changes woman as the object of the look in cin- in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Vicente into Vera. He makes him a ema and in art. The set design of The Eyes Without a Face and Dead Ringers woman, one now presented on film for Skin I Live In, for example, presents us (1988). These classic films resonate in our visual pleasure. Here the image and with several large Renaissance paint- The Skin I Live In on the level of visual the mise en scene take us to another ings by Titian, pictures of reclining reference, in shot set-ups, set design, or level, away from the purely horror film nudes with their bodies prominent to color palette, but most importantly, on reference that the earlier stories may the viewer (Berger, 1972). This pose is the level of story. They depict doctors have suggested, to one of cinematic then repeated as we, and her captors, who alter their victims/patients’ bod- self-reflexivity. At the beginning of the view Vera on large and small flat screen ies, and therefore, their identities. As film, Vera is presented as a prisoner in TVs. Bringing the past of the represen- Robert delivers a lecture on his contro- Robert’s home. We assume that she is tation of women to the present, we, and versial experiments, for example, the the recipient of his special skin experi- the characters, want her, want to be shots and set design of the lecture hall ments and that she is being carefully her. The film screen itself is articulated are reminiscent of those in Dr. Jekyll monitored. At first this certainly seems in its flatness in these scenes, with and Mr. Hyde. And as Robert begins the vaginoplasty on his victim Vicente, cas- The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito, Pedro Almodóvar, 2011) / ®El Deseo. Photograph of José Haro trating him and constructing a vagina, the cold, sleek interior of the operating room, and the litany of surgical prepa- rations recall the visual surface of Dead Ringers. But it is perhaps the content of these earlier cinematic doctors’ op- erations that bear the most compari- son. Dr. Frankenstein, for example, re- animates a man by recombining dead body parts, even the brain, challenging the meaning of identity. Dr. Mantle in Dead Ringers operates on women’s sex- ual organs, alluding to birth and even- tual individuation. In Eyes Without a Face, Dr. Genessier removes the face of his female victim to super-impose

JULY-DECEMBER 2014 L’ ATALANTE 49 NOTEBOOK · CINEPHILE DIRECTORS IN MODERN TIMES

characters caressing Vera’s image, and body of an individual, and the ques- even “licking” her image, alerting us to tions of identity that arise. our own desire. Previous cinematic works depict- However, it is later revealed that ing psychological states have inspired our visual pleasure has been a ploy. Shutter Island and The Skin I Live In. Any fantasy of rape “we” may have In these later works, Martin Scorsese had, any fantasy of “being” Vera, is and Pedro Almodovar have addressed tempered by the revelation that Vera new cinematic approaches to the topic is Vicente. Have we desired having of consciousness, while also engaging sex with a man? Or, have we desired us in added layers of meaning and ex- to be this man? And when Vera says, perience. Shutter Island and The Skin I “I am Vicente” to his mother (perhaps Live In are in some ways memories of the only person on earth who will still past screen memories, and re-viewings accept him as such), what do we make of past cinematic desire. We inhabit of that statement? Is Vera still Vicente? a kind of double exposure, making us What is the meaning of identity? Does aware of our own process of remem- it change with changes to our body? bering as we watch characters in their What is the meaning of our sexual ori- continued inner search, and ideation of entation? Will Vera now be a “lesbian” the past. They struggle and we strug- if she desires a woman, or will she de- gle with identity, with vision, and with sire men and so be a “heterosexual”? dream.  These are just some of the questions that rise from this newly configured working and reworking of old films and theories, now to new and assault- ive effect. The uncanny, as Freud once described it (2003), that is, the return of infantile fears and the dread that ac- companies them, is now made real in a movie about physical changes on the

The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito, Pedro Almodóvar, 2011) / ®El Deseo. Photograph of José Haro

50 L’ ATALANTE JULY-DECEMBER 2014 The remake of memory: Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In

Notes Bibliography * The pictures of The Skin I live In (Pedro Barthes, Roland (2010). Camera Lucida. New Almodóvar, 2011) and Shutter Island (Mar- York: Hill and Wang. tin Scorsese, 2010) that illustrate this essay Berger, John (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: have been provided by El Deseo and Vértice British Broadcasting Company. 360. L’Atalante thanks the distribution com- Dika, Vera (2003). Recycled Culture: The Uses panies their authorization for reproducing of Nostalgia in Contemporary Art and Film. them in this journal. (Edition Note.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1 The critic Noel Carroll takes a slightly differ- Carroll, Noel (1982). The Future of Allusion: ent position regarding this type of referenc- Hollywood in the 1970s (and Beyond). Octo- ing. Carroll claims that allusion establishes a ber 20, Spring, pp. 51-81. “two-tiered system,” one in which the work Cook, Pam (2005). Screening the Past. New provides a “wink” to the knowing members York: Routledge. of the audience, while other less film-knowl- Cram, Christopher (2012). Digital Cinema: The edgeable members of the audience take the Role of the Visual Effects Supervisor. Film film at face value (Carroll, 1982). History. Vol. 24, No. 2, Digital Cinema, pp. 2 It is interesting to note that the 1970s and 169-186. 1980s (and beyond) practice of allusion is Deleuze, Gilles (1989). Cinema 2: The Time Im- one that has often privileged film works age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota from the mid-20the century. Scorsese (and Press. to a lesser extent Almodovar) in the films Fowler, Catherine, “Remembering Cinema under discussion, seem to reference works Elsewhere: From Retrospection to Intro- from the earlier part of the century. In spection in the Gallery Film, Cinema Journal, Scorsese’s subsequent work Hugo (2011), 51.2 (Winter 2012):25-45) the director also returns to the beginning of Freud, Sigmund (2011). The Interpretation of film history, revisiting Georges Melies and Dreams. New York: Psychology Classics. his pioneering films, now through the ex- — (2003). The Uncanny. New York: Penguin tensive use of CGI and 3-D technology. Classics. 3 See Todorov (1975) where he describes a Jameson, Fredric (1983). Postmodernism and literary genre in which the meaning of per- Consumer Society. The Anti-Aesthetic: Es- ceived events is held in suspension between says on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal a psychological and a supernatural interpre- Foster. Port Townsend Press, pp.111-125. tation by the main character and the reader. Laederman, David and Westrup, Laurel (eds.) In the cinematic work The Cabinet of Dr. (2014). Sampling Media. New York: Oxford Caligari, the tension is more between the University Press. objective and subjective interpretation of Mulvey, Laura (1975). Visual Pleasure and the Vera Dika (New York, 1951) events. Narrative Cinema. Screen 16, no.3, Autumn, specialises in US film from 1973 4 Film noir too is highly influenced by German pp. 6-18. to the present, and is the author of several books including, The Expressionism in cinema, stylistic and the- Munsterberg, Hugo and Langdale, Allan (2002). (Moving) Pictures Generation: matic predispositions of which The Cabinet Hugo Munsterberg on film: The photoplay: a New York Downtown Film and Art of Dr. Caligari is an important example. psychological study and other writings. New (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and 5 For an interesting discussion of the possi- York: Routledge. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film: the Uses of Nostalgia bilities in visual effects in the digital era see Todorov, Tzvetan (1975). The Fantastic: A (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Cram (2012). Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Dika is currently Assistant Professor 6 See for example, my discussion of Martin Ithaca: Cornell University Press. of Cinema Studies at New Jersey City Scosese’s The Last Temptation of Christ Verevis, Constantine (2006). Film Remakes. Ed- University. (Dika, 2003:188-196). inburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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