Shutter Island spoilers

ok this post is dedicated to spoilers, so if you don't want to spoil your movie experience, don't read.

My idea of the movie is that there is 3 main hypothesis.

1.Either Dicaprio is crazy at the end of this movie : he is not a marshall anymore and has been around the island for two years.

or you can think it in a more paranoid way.

2.Either Dicaprio is a marshall but he believes what the doctor say and fall into the frame-up's gears and eventually get crushed.

3.or Dicaprio is a marshall and he is still lucid at the end of the movie. You might think that the mind control didn't work, but it actually worked pretty well as his goal was to make you believe he was insane. This way the auschwitz background makes sense. The goal of the island is not to drive people crazy : it's to make the outside world believe people on the island are crazy so that to have a pretext for locking them on the island. From this standpoint, The leftist he meets in the depth of C building is just telling him the truth : dicaprio's mate is acting : he's leading him to the trap((i think is name is chuck so let's call him chuck). One hint of this is the move the woman who killed her husband make. When chuck is looking away, she writes 'run'. But what's more funny, is that chuck tells everything about the island to dicaprio during the storm only to tell him later what he said was a fantasy. Here lies the subtelty of the movie : values are switched. Reality, in the doctor's words, is a fantasy, while the reality he offers is pure invention. He tells Dicaprio that sometimes he can recover from his disease. But it's not recovering, it's adhering to a lie and falling into actual madness. Now, what does dicaprio believe at the end? At first you believe he is crazy and is not an inspector at all... but you forget to consider that you're building your idea of madness from the asylum standards (i.e. reversed values). Then you figure out you've been made a fool of by the movie.

Just think about the missing woman (that return in the middle of the film). She had three kids and killed them. Then she hugs dicaprio -wich is a big emotional stress to him- and tell him "you're not my husband, you're not my husband". Eventually, with the help of drugs, he starts dreaming about this woman and mixes her with his wife : this subsconsciously prepares him to believe he killed his wife(as told by the doctors). They make him beleive he is this woman's husband.

still have a lot of things to say, but i'll just wait for replies

oh and shutter island is an anagram for Truths Denials.

way too much for me to take in there!

i wanted to believe there was an alternate possibility for him to be sane, but with the toy gun and "shooting" the doctor it sort of meant there was no way his initial belifs of himself as a marshal and the island making him belive he's insane could be true.

The doctor gave cigs to dicaprio. What kind of pipe smoker would offer cigs to people. You tell me.

  On 3/1/2010 at 12:18 PM, Babar said:

The doctor gave cigs to dicaprio. What kind of pipe smoker would offer cigs to people. You tell me.

ah, but Dicaprio identified it as his gun, and then coincidently he percieved the hallucination of the gun shooting and then him breaking it in half. If he was under the influence, he still identified the gun, and if the gun was not loaded then why did his "hallucination" play out like the doctors were saying (ie He breaks the gun he's identified as his own in half, and they tell him its a toy). Surely they'd have to suggest to him its a toy first for it to break in his hallucination.

i dunno, i'm confusing myself here.

This movie was a bit of a mindfuck eh? One thing that struck me was the trouble Dicaprio's "partner" had removing his holster,as if he were doing it for the first time.

I'm not saying the "actually he's been on the island for two years" theory is not valid. I'm just pointing out there is another level of understanding to this film which gives to it much more depth, and philosophical roots. I think we can agree the film is written in subjective mode, showing what dicaprio sees and remembers. From the begining of the film on, you're in his head (sort of). Just look at the cliff scene. First he sees his mate tossed around by the waves, he goes down, forget about the corpse, goes into the cave, comes back, and meets the doctors. Then he asks him where is his mate, forgetting about what he saw. It's like if he is in a dream, wadding through fuzzy logics. You can think it's because of his psychosis (thus you think he killed his wife, you believe the doctors), but you can also buy the drug-in-food drug-in-cigs theory(and not believing the doctors who are trying to fool dicaprio, who is the subjective center of the movie : i.e. they're are trying to fool you). What would the drugs do would be bringing confusion and having you not being able to tell reality apart from day-dreaming. This would be a drug to drive you insane. And as much as genuine drugs are not fully able to cure you from psychosis this drug only slightly induces it. There are always symmetries like this one between the roles played by an agent in both version, inspector vs patient-for-2-years(i wil keep this order from now on). -some :

-his wife is what leads him on the island : The doctors attracted him on the island by drawing the pyromaniac card vs. he killed his wife.

-when she tells him "i told you not to go in the lighthouse (during the freakout)". she can mean "i was hiding you from your memories" vs. "i was protecting your memories you're going to be brainwashed"

-The female psychiatrist in the cave. She is either someone real telling truth, or something delusional telling paranoid bullshits.

-About the hug scene between the missing girl (not the psychiatrist) :

if he is a cop, this girl is real, he is not his husband when she hugs him and later the emotional stress of the hug makes him believe he was this woman's husband.

If he is a patient, this girl is fictive, he is his husband when she shouts he's not and later the emotional stress of the shouting pull the trigger of his come down and make him realize he's his husband. (ie. You're not my husband because i'm an illusion.)

It all seems very symmetrical because each scene tells two story at a time, each giving two antagonistic version of the story.

One tells the story of a lucid man getting mad, then getting better at the very end when he ironically plays off his jailer.

The other one tells the story of a madman getting better, then mad at the very end when he gets back into his ravings.

  Quote

This would be a drug to drive you insane. And as much as genuine drugs are not fully able to cure you from psychosis this drug only slightly induce is.

*quoting myself in one of my threads*

i think the film want to make us think there aren't any cure or disease, there would just be different mind-state/worlds and drugs to change mind-states. Because it says both versions are possible there is no unique truth, and that makes a harsh critic of psychiatry that shows psychiatry is just mind control.

xpliquent son passé en le complexifiant.

I didn't watch the movie properly, I just sat there and thought about music, but I got massive chills when this came on when leonardo was in the apartment with his wife (probably because I had heard it before).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rluU6BGpKw

they played it three times throughout the movie LOL

I'd like to participate in the discussion here but I feel my english fails me today.

Yeah really good soundtrack but they played the same pieces too many times... the first time I heard that spooky dramatic bit in the beginning I was blown away, but it lost it's power by the time it was played for about the 40th time.

I didn't think the film was open ended in any way. I think it was made pretty clear that all the conspiracy theories were entirely in his head.

I thought the film was entertaining, well acted and well shot, but at the end of it, it was pointless really... I would have expected something more thought provoking, but I guess you can't really squeeze anything too intelligent out of a collection of cliche's (the dialogue was so cheesy! "You have to let me go!")

Also, none of this would ever happen in real life, because no one would allow a mental patient who happened to have a history of violence run around and play cops and robbers like that, regardless of weather or not he had constant attention from a psychiatrist, and certainly not unrestrained, in the middle of a freak storm that allowed some of the most dangerous patients on the island run wild as well.

  On 3/1/2010 at 3:34 PM, Velazquez said:

This movie was a bit of a mindfuck eh? One thing that struck me was the trouble Dicaprio's "partner" had removing his holster,as if he were doing it for the first time.

This. It was the first big clue I noticed.

i can't believe Scorsese pulled an 'Identity' 'Secret Window' and 'Session 9' all in one movie.

I totally guessed the ending from the trailer.

When I saw it in the theater, everybody was gasping in awe when the twist happened.

I was like "Heellloooo! Seriously, people!".

Yeah, I thought it was pretty obvious from the trailer too.

It's a little smarter in the film, and it's true that it could still be taken both ways. But I'm firmly in the camp that he was a nutter who imagined the investigation.

He also found the note underneath the floorboards pretty easily.

so is this movie even worth watching knowing that it has a cop-out 'it's all in his head' style surprise ending?

  On 3/1/2010 at 10:55 PM, jefferoo said:

I totally guessed the ending from the trailer.

When I saw it in the theater, everybody was gasping in awe when the twist happened.

I was like "Heellloooo! Seriously, people!".

yeah, i knew it was going to end with some variation of "It was all in his head", but i still enjoyed it.

soundtrack was very nice too.

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:50 AM, Backson said:

  On 3/1/2010 at 10:55 PM, jefferoo said:

I totally guessed the ending from the trailer.

When I saw it in the theater, everybody was gasping in awe when the twist happened.

I was like "Heellloooo! Seriously, people!".

yeah, i knew it was going to end with some variation of "It was all in his head", but i still enjoyed it.

 

soundtrack was very nice too.

good to hear, ill probably see it

what a rubbish film. basically a pretentious twilight zone episode. anyone else notice the eno bit for like 15 seconds after leo gets strangled/strangles the looney tune?

There is one detail that would have to be rationalized before I consider any theory other than the fact that he was delusional. That fact is the four anagrams of the same set of letters. Of the four names, two of them are furnished by him: his own (Teddy) and the pyromaniac he is looking for (Laeddis). It would be an amazing coincidence that he and the man who killed his wife shared the exact same letter set. Perhaps the staff on the island could have fabricated the names of the missing woman (and the fourth person, who I forget) to match the letter set so as to convince him he was insane, but Teddy was the one provided his and Laeddis' names, making it highly unlikely. It is because of my inability to resolve this point that I have no reason but to believe that Teddy was truly delusional.

If this actually the case, I am actually somewhat disappointed in the story for having such a plain resolution. Perhaps part of the story's appeal is the way that several facts for both cases are made that make the situation intentionally ambiguous.

By the way, what's with that film score? I didn't like it at all. When the movie started I thought I was hallucinating because I thought I heard a few seconds of Ligeti's 'Lontano'. I simply wrote it off as coincidence because I was under the impression that it was an original score and I did not recognize any other pieces. I should have known better because it's Scorcese film. Once I realized the next day that I had initially guessed correctly I was disappointed by the fact that they didn't employ the piece for more than a few seconds.

One more thing. Does anyone see any significance in the monologue by the warden as he is driving Teddy back to the building the next day? I can't figure how it fits with the other themes in the film and therefore felt somewhat contrived.

  On 3/2/2010 at 5:35 AM, Wall Bird said:

There is one detail that would have to be rationalized before I consider any theory other than the fact that he was delusional. That fact is the four anagrams of the same set of letters. Of the four names, two of them are furnished by him: his own (Teddy) and the pyromaniac he is looking for (Laeddis). It would be an amazing coincidence that he and the man who killed his wife shared the exact same letter set. Perhaps the staff on the island could have fabricated the names of the missing woman (and the fourth person, who I forget) to match the letter set so as to convince him he was insane, but Teddy was the one provided his and Laeddis' names, making it highly unlikely. It is because of my inability to resolve this point that I have no reason but to believe that Teddy was truly delusional.

 

If this actually the case, I am actually somewhat disappointed in the story for having such a plain resolution. Perhaps part of the story's appeal is the way that several facts for both cases are made that make the situation intentionally ambiguous.

thankyou! that was the other thing that closed off the "sane" theory.

I would have appreciated it to be more ambiguous too. It would have me contemplating for days.

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:17 AM, Awepittance said:

so is this movie even worth watching knowing that it has a cop-out 'it's all in his head' style surprise ending?

yes. The film won't change your world, but I found it fairly engaging.

  On 3/1/2010 at 7:39 PM, Springymajig said:

 

I didn't think the film was open ended in any way. I think it was made pretty clear that all the conspiracy theories were entirely in his head.

 

I thought the film was entertaining, well acted and well shot, but at the end of it, it was pointless really... I would have expected something more thought provoking, but I guess you can't really squeeze anything too intelligent out of a collection of cliche's (the dialogue was so cheesy! "You have to let me go!")

 

qft

i was hoping that it wasn't going to end the way it did and i think the OP's clutching at alternatives is him failing to deal with a badly written film. let it go babar. but saying that i want to believe. how could such a badly made mystery make it out into the cinema? so maybe, just maybe its like you say.

  On 3/2/2010 at 5:35 AM, Wall Bird said:

That fact is the four anagrams of the same set of letters.

final nail in the theory coffin

  On 3/1/2010 at 7:39 PM, Springymajig said:

in the middle of a freak storm that allowed some of the most dangerous patients on the island run wild as well.

wasn't the storm in his head too?

Yeah, the scene in which he sheltered from the storm in the graveyard seemed imagined to me.

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:17 AM, Awepittance said:

so is this movie even worth watching knowing that it has a cop-out 'it's all in his head' style surprise ending?

i am a great believer in going to the movies. seeing a film in the cinema can save a bad movie. and i think it did here. the movie is really full of tension, despite the in his head ending. seeing it on some camjob - it would probably suck.

the max richter despite being overused worked really well in the scene where she turns to ashes.

p.s fuck tilda swinton