Teddy thinks he sees Chuck's dead body on the rocks. He finds a cave. Inside is a woman who claims to be the real Rachel Solando—an undercover reporter. She says they had her on psychotropic medication and that the doctors at the island were trying to perfect mind control.
But when she went to report this fact they had her committed to the island. Teddy leaves her and then makes his way to the Shutter Island lighthouse. There he discovers Cawley waiting for him. Cawley explains that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, their "most dangerous patient. He was sent to the island after murdering his manic-depressive wife, Dolores. It turns out that Dolores drowned their three children.
Cawley tells us that Andrew attacked the patient he talked to in Ward C two weeks earlier for calling him Laeddis. That he's retreated into being Teddy to protect his own mental state. Teddy is in this fragile state because he saw signs his wife was nuts earlier when she burned down their first apartment together, but he never sought help for her.
They just moved to a lake house, where Dolores' issues manifested in the murder of their children. The "investigation" was an attempt by Cawley to break Teddy out of his funk, get him to accept reality, and deal with his issues. The whole island was in on this elaborate hoax. And Chuck is still alive, but he's actually Dr. Lester Sheehan. There was even a nurse posing as Rachel Solando. All of this overwhelms Teddy, and he faints, unable to handle the reality shown to him.
Teddy wakes up in the hospital under the watch of Cawley, Sheehan, and the nurse who played Rachel Solando. Teddy tells them the truth they told him in a coherent manner, but they are terrified he will soon regress. And it is revealed they've done this to him before. Teddy is warned that this is the last chance; otherwise, they will have to lobotomize him. We pick up with Teddy later sitting next to Sheehan.
But Teddy calls him "Chuck," saying they must leave the island. This causes Sheean to signal Cawley, letting him know Teddy has sunk back into his mania. The warden says Teddy should be taken to be lobotomized.
But before he goes to leave, Teddy asks Sheehan if it would be worse "to live as a monster, or to die as a good man? Sheehan calls Teddy by the name Teddy, but he doesn't respond. Leaving room for us to think he actually knows he's Andrew but wants to be relieved from the pain and guilt he feels.
There are so many twists inside this movie, it's hard to pin one down. Obviously, everyone wants to talk about the ending, and we will. But what about all the brilliant twists that get lost in the sauce of the big twist? So much of Teddy's investigation has to work two ways. You have to have it make sense as a deputy marshall, but then it all has to retroactively make sense when you figure out it's a ruse. His children were dead, and his grief drove him to shoot his wife.
Andrew Laeddis couldn't live with the guilt of what he had done and what he hadn't done , so his mind retreated into what his patient chart calls "highly developed and fantastical narratives. At one point in "Shutter Island," Teddy has an encounter with Dr. Naehring Max von Sydow in the bowels of the hospital. Naehring talks about how the word "trauma" came from the Greek word for "wound," saying:. By the end, Teddy has come around to this way of thinking. He knows he's wounded and that he's a monster prone to violent outbursts, who has hurt other people, not just his wife.
The 67th patient at Ashecliffe is him. If the doctors can't break through to him and get him to accept the reality of his situation, "Permanent measures will be taken to ensure he can never hurt anyone again.
Teddy's hallucinations of Dolores have already warned him that the lighthouse will be the end of him. Cawley explains that everyone humored Andrew's mock investigation as part of "the most radical, cutting-edge roleplay ever attempted in psychiatry. Teddy finally has a moment of clarity and he says it out loud: "My name is Andrew Laeddis, and I murdered my wife in the spring of ' Sheeran, "Which would be worse — to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?
It's one of those twisty thrillers like "The Usual Suspects" where the ending rejiggers much of what you've seen. Some viewers might not be on board with the film's denouement, but if you approach it from thematic standpoint, this is an underrated movie with some deep resonance to it. Most people probably have something in their lives they regret, something they wish they could go back and do or undo.
We don't all "create an elaborate fictional structure" to process grief and guilt, as Andrew Laeddis does and as artists sometimes do. But if you're hooked into the themes and believe that art can function as therapy, Andrew's story is one with some real catharsis to it.
Not everything in "Shutter Island" holds up. On the way to its twist ending the film flounders a bit in its second act, getting lost in the maze it has devised for Teddy and us. It could have probably stood to shave off some of those extra 17 minutes and be closer to a traditional two-hour feature. The way Chuck goes along with some things — even putting ideas in Teddy's head and nourishing his delusions — doesn't always make sense, retroactively, if he's a psychiatrist trying to nurture him back to health.
Then again, the line where Teddy's hallucinations begin and end isn't always clear. There's a scene with Ted Levine in a jeep, where he talks about violence conquering violence and how "God loves violence. That's not to say that a movie like this can't have more than one theme or interpretation. But if you're willing to wade into the deep end of the pool or drowning lake , "Shutter Island" is a film where trauma, grief, guilt, and regret meet in a tempest of raw emotion — the kind that can only be channeled through a hearty Leonardo DiCaprio outburst.
The world you and I exist in, is as crazy as anything going on at Ashecliffe. Crazier, even. What about Rachel? Not the one pretending to be patient The difference with Rachel is that all the previous hallucinations were momentary. They last less then a minute. Rachel, though, is there when Teddy enters the cave and there when he wakes up the next morning. Especially when you go back through the movie a second or third time or in my case, a seventh. There are a dozen other examples.
And it seems Andrew is at least somewhat aware of what he says and does as Teddy. And again, Teddy was down bad when he saw Rachel. She would be the climax in this string of active imaginings. But on the other hand only took me 13 paragraphs to get here , it would be fitting if Rachel were real as it stops the movie from being solely one-dimensional. Being one-dimensional is not necessarily a bad thing or an impossible thing. For the most part, Scorsese has been a straightforward filmmaker.
His movies have twists and turns in terms of what happens and how it happens like The Departed , but they never leave you guessing. So there is an argument to be made that Rachel being real adds an important dimensionality to the story.
That there can be truth in madness. It just gets dismissed. That argument is reinforced by Cawley having a script for everything else Teddy says but being surprised about the woman in the cave. Come on. You may notice that water is ever-present in Shutter Island.
And that fire ends up appearing several times. And that fire and water are opposites. We even have that dream where Dolores is soaking wet but ash is falling all around her and Teddy. Dolores even turns to ash. Then Andrew wakes up with water leaking on him. Meaning that we should associate fire, in any form, with fiction. And water with reality. When you keep this symbolism in mind when re-watching, Shutter Island takes on a whole other layer of depth.
The storm becomes symbolic. Those matches going out is perfect, as Noyce is the first person to tell Teddy the truth rather than trying to keep up the performance. That was a hallucination involving water. Great point. But Chuck was a lie, right? He was just a character Sheehan was playing. So the body on the rocks, swept away by the tide, only reinforces the symbolism of water representing truth.
The next time the character appears is in the lighthouse, as Dr. The two of them are in a cave. Huddled around…a fire. I mean. Now he seeks refuge from the water by sitting next to the fire. In other words: Teddy has gotten too close to reality and is trying to find comfort in delusion. And this is the big one, right? The lighthouse is another important symbol. We initially associate it with lobotomies and the unspoken horrors of Ashecliffe. A lighthouse is supposed to serve as a beacon in darkness for those who are out at sea.
False fire. All of which involve somewhat staggering moral complexities reinforced through cinematic language.
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