Explanation of the meaning of the film "Shutter Island" 2010

 Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner appear at Ashcliffe Mental Hospital, investigating the mysterious story of one of the patients. The hospital is located on the island for a reason: its mentally ill patients are extremely dangerous and have already caused harm to others. Teddy has to get to the bottom of the truth, but he realizes that it will not be easy. The patient he is looking for seems to have disappeared from her room. But this is where the riddles only begin: the marshal finds himself in the very epicenter of intrigues and intrigues that reign on the island.

But is it really as it seems to the protagonist?

The film is intriguing and grabs attention from the first minutes. The meaning of the film "Isle of the Damned" is not revealed immediately, but closer to the ending. Let's figure out in stages what the film Isle of the Damned is about.

Analysis of the film "Shutter Island"

I apologize in advance for anyone who sees hidden secrets or deeper meaning in the film. All conspiracy theories that "Isle of the Damned" is some kind of secret government agency are simply not true.

DiCaprio's character, Andrew Laddis (aka Patient 67), is a mentally ill prisoner of the Isle of the Damned, whom doctors are trying to rehabilitate. Teddy thinks he is exploring the island, but in reality he is caught up in an intricate role-playing game developed by Dr. Cowley and Teddy's partner Chuck, who is actually Teddy's primary psychiatrist, "missing" Dr. Sheehan.

Cowley and Sheehan are more sympathetic doctors who believe that through therapy and compassion, Andrew Laddis' madness can be cured. On the other hand, Dr. Naring and the warden believe that guys like Andrew are too unstable and too violent for a therapeutic decision.

An island role-play was performed to give Dr. Cowley and Dr. Sheehan one last chance to prove their method was effective. They must prove that Andrew Laddys can be deduced from his "Teddy Daniels" fantasy and can accept reality: his wife Dolores was mentally ill and killed their children, and it was he, Andrew, who killed her in revenge. Andrew feels guilty because he knew about his wife's madness for a long time. But due to his own drinking problems and post-World War II PTSD, Andrew did not acknowledge the scale of her problems, and it cost him his children.

Feelings of guilt and resentment led Andrew to invent a minor personality in which he is still a war hero and federal marshal named Teddy Daniels. Because he is smart, he comes up with a confusing mental narrative in which he cannot (or does not want to) unravel the main mystery: that he is the very patient 67.

Explanation of the ending of the movie "Shutter Island"

The ending of the film seems ambiguous to many, but, again, for me it was pretty clear. Teddy realizes that he is actually Andrew Laddys. He's smart, which can be seen the next day. When Dr. Sheehan sits on the steps with him, Andrew knows that doctors are watching his behavior. The fact is that his guilt and pain are still so heavy that he knows he cannot live with them. Rather than living with all the pain, he decides to pretend to be Teddy Daniels to let them lobotomize him and finally free himself from his burden.

At the end of the film, he utters the phrase: "What is worse: to die as a man or to live as a monster?"

Exposing the conspiracy theory

Different people perceive the same things in all sorts of ways, but you must have concrete evidence from the source material to support your theory. Here is a list of examples that confirm that Teddy Daniels was sane at the end of the movie and deceived the doctors.

• When the movie begins, Teddy is on a boat to the island. The cabin that Teddy is in has handcuffs, which are restrictions on prisoners being brought to the island. It was in them that Teddy was most likely contained before the start of the experiment. As for the fact that Teddy doesn't remember anything before he got on the ship - this is most likely a small hole in the film.
• At the lighthouse, Dr. Cowley tells Andrew that he is hallucinating and shivering from the drugs he is taking. But the opposite is actually true, the cigarettes and pills that Teddy takes throughout the film are designed to relieve him of hallucinations. Cowley and Sheehan stop giving Andrew medication during the experiment to help him break through to reality. Throughout the film, Teddy has more and more vivid hallucinations, his drugs were supposed to  suppress the  psychosis, not intensify. Avoiding drugs is what drives him crazy in the movie.

• Fire is a symbol of Andrew's madness. If you look closely, every time Teddy is near the fire - he experiences some kind of hallucination. The matches he lights from time to time, the fire in the cave with Dr. Solando, the fire from the explosion of Dr. Cowley's car. Fire is a symbol of the   gyro fantasy world , and water (the opposite of fire) is a symbol of the  reality that happened to him. His wife drowns her children in water, and it is the water that makes Andrew so upset, restless, and sick throughout the film. The cave scene with "Dr. Solando" is not real - and therefore her whole story that Isle of the Damned is a secret government laboratory for mind control is also not real.

• The entire "government mind control operation" is a fantasy of Andry Laddis. She allows him to explain to himself over and over again why he is on the island, and allows him to demonize doctors and staff as a threat or conspirators. The purpose of the role-playing game of Dr. Cowley and Dr. Sheehan is to allow Andrew to see how impossible and absurd his conspiracy theory is, allowing him to explore it to the end. This is why Dr. Sheehan provokes Andrew's wild theories. He wants  Andrew to act out his fantasies until he sees that it's absurd.
• The character George Noyce is the guy who knew Teddy in prison. Noyce was a criminal who ended up on the island and fed Andrew's fantasies. Noyce once called "Teddy" by the name of Laddys, causing a psychotic explosion, for which Andrew beat him. It was this attack that led Dr. Naering and the Sentinel to push Laddis into lobotomy, forcing Dr. Cowley and Dr. Sheehan to create an RPG as a final attempt to cure Laddis.

Rule # 4 and patient # 67

 

Rule number 4 has to do with the anagram names that Andrew comes up with for his fantasy world. Edward Daniels is an anagram for Andrew Laddys, and Rachel Solando is an anagram for Dolores Chanal, the maiden name of Andrew's dead wife. For anagrams to work, use English names. As for Patient 67: Andrew Laddys is Patient 67. Teddy Daniels can never find Patient 67, and while he is looking for him, he will not be able to return to reality.

Rachel Solando is just a play. Rachel Laddys is the name of Andrew's dead daughter. His daughter is the same little girl who appears in his dreams about the Holocaust and says that he had to save her. His daughter personifies the truth - she is the only thing that Andrew cannot deny or forget. Dr. Cowley's nurse Rachel Solando is part of a therapy technique that makes Andrew think of his real wife. If you watch this scene again, you can see that Cowley's idea almost worked, but not quite. Andrew's brain just can't handle the load.

Latest confirmation from the filmmakers

The main actors and director talked for a very long time about how difficult it was to shoot the  island of the damned . The problem was that when they started filming the film, they realized that on first viewing, viewers had to believe that Dr. Cowley and the Isle of the Damned could be something sinister. But on re-viewing, you should realize that everyone around Teddy is role-playing and trying to keep his fantasy alive, although many of the staff and security guards are not happy with this.

After watching the film a second time and knowing how it ends, I have to say that Scorsese and the actors did a great job. It's all too obvious that the other characters know Teddy is crazy, and here are some tips to help you see it for yourself:

• Watch the guards throughout the movie. They can be very irritable when Teddy is around, and they grip the weapon a little tighter. This is especially true at the very beginning, when the "Marshals" come to the island. This is because the guards know that Teddy is crazy and they are not thrilled with the role-playing experiment. It is also because they are not keen on finding Rachel Solando, who doesn't exist.
• Pay attention to the interview with the staff. When Teddy and Chuck interview nurses and orderlies, it's easy to see how ridiculous the staff see this all. One nurse jokes ironically because she is talking to a madman dressed as a policeman. In this scene, the staff are also not overly keen on role-playing, and Dr. Sheehan / Chuck pushes them to answer Teddy's questions.
• When Teddy interviews Mrs. Kearns, she writes "run" on the paper that Teddy slips because she knows he has the ability to escape while they are doing this whole experiment.
• The creepy lady at the beginning of the movie waves to Teddy because she knows him, knows he is playing a game, and was ordered not to spoil it. She's a crazy lady enjoying the game, that's all.

After all,  Isle of the Damned  is a pretty obvious movie if you look at it closely. I understand that the reality where Teddy is crazy may not be as funny as some of the conspiracy theories, but the evidence is throughout the movie. That said, isn't it funny when a film generates so much controversy and debate and imagination?

The meaning of the film Shutter Island

The meaning of the film "Isle of the Damned" is mainly in the fact that it is easier for a person to believe in the most ridiculous invention than to accept the bitter truth.

The solution is shocking and confusing in the first minutes. According to Dr. Cowley, Marshal Teddy Daniels is not and never has been, but there is Andrew Laddys, a patient at Ashcliff Hospital. In the past, he lived with his wife Dolores and three children. Dolores was mentally ill and once drowned all her children. Returning home, Andrew found them dead. Out of despair, he killed his wife, whom he loved very much. Andrew was unable to accept reality and cope with feelings of guilt for the death of his family, so his brain created a new personality of the Marshal and his confused story in an attempt to forget the unbearable truth.

He spent several years in the hospital, but the treatment did not help. Laddys was a violent patient with a lobotomy. However, Dr. Cowley and Dr. Lester Sheen are determined to give Laddys another chance to cope with the madness. He is allowed to feel like Marshal Teddy Daniels and to the end play the role he invented in order to independently get to the bottom of the truth and realize the illogicality of his ideas.

He is taken out of the hospital on a ship, and then he returns there on it for his own investigation. He gets used to the role of a marshal, conducts interrogations, looks for evidence. All staff and patients of the psychiatric hospital take part in the experiment, playing along with the one who was recently locked in one of the wards. Some are rather skeptical, but the game continues until the finale.

At the lighthouse, Dr. Cowley explains to the imaginary marshal all the oddities that he has encountered lately. Nightmares and hallucinations are not the result of taking substances injected by Teddy's ill-wishers, but, on the contrary, the result of refusal from the drugs that he took during the treatment period. The disappeared patient has never been in the hospital, these are just games of the patient's mind of the protagonist. It is not easy to believe in Dr. Cowley's story, and to accept this truth is too difficult for Laddis, because the madness protected him from terrible memories and feelings of guilt for the death of loved ones.

Andrew knew about his wife's illness, but did not attach much importance to it. As a result, his children died at the hands of an insane mother. The loss of the family he loved so much tears Laddys's soul apart, and the unbearable pain of knowing his own responsibility drives him crazy. He blames himself for leaving the children with the sick Dolores, for not helping her cope with a serious illness. But he cannot change the past, and the present becomes an unbearable burden. Andrew's consciousness cuts the events of reality and sews a canvas of cunning invention to hide under it the feeling of guilt in what happened.

Andrew Laddis cannot accept the truth, and therefore does not want to know it. He blindly believes in his role as Marshal to the end, but still he has to give it up.

The meaning of the ending of the film Shutter Island

After watching, many viewers are left with a question: was Andrew able to defeat the madness?

The ending of the film leaves no doubt about the success of the experiment. Yes, Laddis is taken to a lobotomy as if to confirm the victory of the disease over his mind. But Andrew's farewell phrase to his doctor testifies to the opposite: "Which is better: live a monster or die a man?"

He makes his choice and voluntarily goes to the lobotomy, continuing to play the role of the marshal, although he no longer believes in it. He understood the truth, but he could not accept it. For him, guilt in the death of his wife and children makes him a monster, and he refuses to live with this burden.

The doctor understands what the patient's words mean, but lets him go to the operation. He cannot stand in the way of his choice to die as a human. The truth, discovered in the experiment, fell on Andrew's shoulders too heavily.

The meaning of the ending is precisely in the last question of the protagonist "to live as a monster or die as a man", but everyone makes the choice himself. And the choice of Andrew Laddis is quite understandable - to die as a man, because there is no strength to live as a monster.

Write in the comments your assumptions and theories about what the film Isle of the Damned is about and what is its meaning. We will be looking forward to it!