Shutter Island

I don't think it was a twist .. I truly believe He was Teddy the US Marshall .. If i learned something from watching Darren Brown is that subliminal suggestion is everything .. Since he got on that Island . Gandhi , The Nazi , The Nurses , the patients .. and even his partner were suggesting stuff to him , they created the story of the fucked up Mother to use it against him in the end ..

the Doctor in the Cave and rorschach were right .. they manipulated him (With drugs , suggestions , etc) ..

He was investigating a top secret experiment .. he was going to expose it .. that is more enough reason for them to keep him on the island ..

MK Ultra was real , the government does this kind of top secret experiments all the time .. (Cold War

Oh .. THE LOBOTOMY AND THE LIGHTHOUSE EXPERIMENTS WERE ACTUALLY HAPPENING !!!

to see if events throughout the movie are as preposterous as they seem to be in retrospect, after the reveal and explanation at the end.

i was also very resistant to the twist, but the extent to which they went to explain his past, with the detailed, dramatic, emotional flashback, and how they brought in teddy in to confront him as his psychologist... it's very clear that the movie intends for the twist to be real. dr. kingsley could have just insisted that his partner never existed, that the dude is crazy because of that, and, since he has total authority there, could have detained him even without all the effort put into the elaborate confrontation in the lighthouse. what was all that lighthouse business for then? dr. kingsley wanted to mislead us in the audience? lame. if that was all there in the movie just to create ambiguity, then they failed hard, because all of that stuff strongly suggests that leo is who they say he is, if we're treating the characters as if they don't know that they're in a movie, which of course we should.

i think the movie actually could have been better without the twist, if there really was plot to exploit his past traumas, to make him seem insane to keep him there and cover up their operations, because that actually seems to be the more realistic scenario, lol! a grand, dangerous roleplay because sensitive dr. kingsley wants to help leo to get better, so they don't have to sadly poke his brain? psh. it also could been better if they kept it ambiguous, but logically so, such that the characters don't do ridiculous things solely for the audience's benefit.

I kind of agree .. but the movie give us the choice to believe our own ending .. so i kind of choose to look at the movie without the twist .. (Because i am into Cold War top secrecy and shit like that)

If i look at the movie with the twist , there are a lot of Holes ( In my Opinion) ..

What were they doing in the ferry at the beginning , Why did the nurse pose as the Crazy mother , why did the Nazi doctor analyzed him as Teddy and not as a crazy patient .. The nurse in the cave was right about the experiments in the lighthouse and the lobotomy (which was a whole fucking point of the experiments) .. etc etc ..

But in the other hand ..

His fear of water would explain the Crazy Wife drowning the kids theory .. , the twist would also explain why he found that piece of paper ( The law of 4) , etc etc

The movie is kind of confusion , but i think it is good that way , because it allowed me to create my own storyline ( Kind of like the crazy people did)

He goes crazy from the investigation and is committed to the institution, then is brutally raped by badgers.

I'm also a little perturbed by the significance of the lighthouse as a setting for the finale, but I'm firmly siding with the view that Leo is delusional. If he were simply a cop being conned with suggestion and drugs there would be less emphasis on the scene in which he finds his children. That flashback was also portrayed with a realism that didn't exist within his hallucinations and dreams, which serves to define it as truth.

Whether Leo believed that he was a patient or still a cop was left more ambiguous though, which was a good conclusion, I thought.

I don't think Leo was captive on the island for 24 months, but instead that the experiments were really true (though I guess its more convincing to believe he did kill his wife and whatnot, as it kind of resolves a lot of the ambiguity in flashbacks and dreams). But the final shot of the lighthouse especially led me to believe he was being brainwashed/deluded after all.

"Chuck Aule" could have easily been sent off-island to meet with him as his case partner, and while he later revealed that he was really a psychologist, I think he only played the part of Leo's psychologist to prevent Leo from spreading the word on the experiments. The visions, nightmares and odd shots—for instance, when the patient they were interviewing took a drink of water, the glass disappearing for one shot and reappearing the next—could be effects of the drugs Leo was slipped.

Then again, I may believe this because I find my interpretation much more interesting than the shallow twist that he was a patient on the island. Maybe it's the conspiracist in me, but this is why I loved Rosemary's Baby—the ambiguity-turned-affirmation of the protagonist's suspicions. but oh, bruce willis is dead? fuck off.