Shutter Island is a psychological thriller directed by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo Dicaprio. The film follows the investigation of an insane asylum on Shutter Island. The federal Marshall, Teddy, is investigating a missing persons case because a prisoner, a supposed Rachel Solando. As the movie plays out, the investigation points to the asylum being a corrupt facility that practices experiments on patients. Teddy decides that he is going to get to the bottom of it and expose the island and its workers. During the final act, we find that Teddy is actually a patient at the facility and his investigation was an elaborate treatment that featured role play to get him to admit that he is actually Andrew Laeddis. The entire movie plays with your mind and subverts your expectations.
The film certainly begs for a second watch through in order to fully form a conclusion. I for one, wanted to believe that Dicaprio’s character was still “Teddy” but the staff on Shutter Island shut him up via hallucinogens in order to cover up their experiments. However, looking back, the clues given throughout the film all support the argument that he was in fact a patient at the hospital. While I have accepted the fact that Andrew/Teddy is in fact a patient there, the question now becomes, did the character relapse at the end of the movie? Or did he willingly go to “The Lighthouse” in order to end his pain knowing he was Andrew.
The character asks his partner, is it better “to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?” which prompts the viewer to question which version of Dicaprio’s character is conscious. Scorsese clearly left it open ended and intends for the viewer to make the final decision. The film is interesting because it finds the viewer getting lost in it. We find ourselves having trouble distinguishing truth as the line gets blurred between what is real and what is a hallucination. We route for Teddy throughout the entire film only to find that he is the worst patient on the island. It shines a light on mental health as well because the viewer is essentially put into the mind of Teddy/Andrew with no way of knowing what reality is and what delusion is.
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