I saw the film a fair few months ago, so my recollection might be a little hazy on what exactly happened, but here is my opinion…
I haven’t read the book, so I have no idea if this was Scorsese, but I think it is left purposefully to provoke this kind of debate, there is clear reasons for him to be insane, or not insane, so I think it is going to be pretty impossible to say for certain it is either. However, and like I said, I cant fully remember all the details right now, but one bit that stuck with me was the opening. Where does the character come from? Well, out of the mist on a boat. That is it, there is no, at least to begin with, introduction to him apart from some information that is given on the boat. He seems to appear out of nowhere, created from nothing. Just like his story is? I think so. It just seems to me to suggest that the reason we are not shown anything of his background at the start is because there is no background at the start. His past only becomes clear as his memories as such start to ‘return’ to him.
Im so that example could be argued against without much trouble, but it stuck in my head.
Ah also, another thing is that the ‘memories’ of his time as a solider seem to come from the fact the Asylum is designed how a Nazi concentration camp may have looked like… And i am sure if I could remember more of the film, there are links to where these memories may have been placed.
Hope that has brought up some new stuff for you to beat you friend up over!
yes the film is constructed 2 have elements of mystery especially as the set up was on a boat already departed and at one point i thought the island guards and staff were disguised inmates luring the detectives into a trap!
leo’s new detective friend is probably the key because if he was really a detective then why would he suddenly become a doctor on the island?
There are many hints prior to the reveal that “Teddy’s” world is not what it seems. See some of the recent posts in this thread .
Bryan Angarita
I have been having an ongoing discussion about the conclusion of the movie and what it means for a few weeks now. Well not really discussion, more of a flat-out balls to the wall disagreement, to the point where it’s gotten to the verge of fist-fighting, yesterday he tackled me onto my couch and was going to do I don’t know what sorts of crazy things before I got out of his grapple just for my coming up with a good point, and then proceeding to flaunt it in his face. Anyway, the point is my friend believes that basically in the end, the whole movie is a exactly as it is, Teddy Daniels real name is Andrew Laeddis, he really did have three kids, he really did kill his wife, he really has been staying the asylum for the past 2 years, and the whole movie really is an attempt for the directors and psychiatrists at the asylum to rehabilitate Laeddis and bring him back to reality.
I’m of the belief, well, I’m on the other side of that school of thought, I think that Teddy really is a US Federal Marshall sent to Shutter Island to investigate what happened to a missing girl, he never had any children, his wife was killed in a fire, and what’s done to him is an attempt to keep him on the island and stop him from further investigating them to avoid any inconveniences to the work done on the island.
We both agree that sane or not, the whole thing is a set-up, whether to rehabilitate him or make him lose his sanity and his identity all the strings are being pulled by Kingsley, Sydow, and the Warden; we also agree that his partner Chuck really is Dr. Sheehan, in the case of any political conspiracy I’ve settled with the fact that Dr. Sheehan would be the perfect person to pose as Teddy’s new partner from Portland, I mean Seattle; and we both agree that by the end of the movie he makes a sane decision to receive a lobotomy, and that that lobotomy is performed on him in the light house he suspected experiments were being conducted on people all along. I believe he chose to receive a lobotomy for the purpose of not compromising and playing the doctor’s game, as a last sane decision to maintain what little identity has been left of his by the island, he’d rather have his brain taken out on his terms than to continue living on the doctor’s terms, my friend on the other end thinks he chooses to receive the lobotomy because he doesn’t want to go on carrying the guilt of having murdered his wife for the rest of his life, that he’d rather receive a lobotomy and have comfort being ignorantly bliss, unaware his past.
I’d like to know what the community thinks, I’m very interested to here what evidence you can come up with to support your theories and claims, if any… if this thread dies well then… that would suck. In any case, I’d like to hear your thoughts on it.