For cinephiles searching fora dark and twisty psychological thriller, look no further thanShutter Island. Adapted fromDennis Lehane’s 2003 novel,the 2010 filmchecks all the prerequisite boxes for a neo-noir rollercoaster ride. Isolated setting? Check. An obsessive and paranoid main character? Check. Shadowy visuals and low-key lighting? Check. The film about a U.S. Marshal investigating the case of a missing mental patient was a hit for directorMartin Scorsese, with praise given for its atmosphere, performances, and camera work.Reactions were split on the film’s polarizing twist ending, but that didn’t stopShutter Islandfrom becoming a box office success.
Shutter Island
Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, two US marshals, are sent to an asylum on a remote island in order to investigate the disappearance of a patient, where Teddy uncovers a shocking truth about the place.
What Is ‘Shutter Island’ About?
Set in 1954, the film is the story of U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he and his partner (Mark Ruffalo) travel to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on the remote Shutter Island. Once there, they begin investigating the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando (Patricia Clarkson), who was sent to Ashecliffe for drowning her children. Answers are slow coming, with the only clue being a cryptic riddle found in Rachel’s room. But the more digging that Teddy does into Rachel and Ashecliffe, the more questions he has. Plagued by disturbing dreams, a series of mysteries surrounding the facility’s rehabilitation methods, and a massive oncoming storm that threatens his progress, Teddy quickly learns that there’s more to Ashecliffe, its patients, and doctors than meets the eye.
There’s lots of twisty fun to be had inShutter Island, especially when the audience is invited to play along with Teddy to solve the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance. The performances are all solid,especially DiCaprioandBen Kingsleyas the secretive psychiatrist John Cawley, butthe real star of the film is the environment. Between the isolated, rain-pummeled island and Ashecliffe’s many dark prison cells and long, silent corridors, the film is practically dripping with atmosphere.Scorsese’s choice of low lighting invites deep shadows that contribute to the pictureas well as the claustrophobic feel and gloomy mood that permeates the film. The pace does tend to drag over its 2+ hour runtime, but it’s a solid psychological thriller that makes it feel like time well spent.
But how did it all pan out? Did Teddy uncover the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance?What’s the deal with his hallucinations?And are therereallysecrets being kept at Ashecliffe? If you’re wondering how the story concluded for our good friend Teddy — including that polarizingtwist ending— let’s break it down.
What Is Really Happening in ‘Shutter Island’?
Throughout the film, Teddy suffers a series of migraines and hallucinations of his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), who was killed in a fire set by a man named Andrew Laeddis. As his mental strain becomes more severe over the course of his investigation into Rachel’s disappearance, his search takes him outside Ashecliffe’s walls to the seaside cliffs and Shutter Island’s ominous lighthouse, just off the coast. There, he finds Dr. Cawley, who unravels the events of the film for the audience, and for Teddy. As Dr. Cawley explains,Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis(an anagram of Teddy’s assumed name of Edward Daniels). It turns out that Andrew is actually an inmate at Ashecliffe, and that the film’s events up until this point — Cawley’s allowing Andrew to play the role of Teddy — were designed to cure his insanity that stemmed from murdering his depressed wife after she drowned their children at their lake house. To cope,he took on the alternate persona of Teddy Daniels.
The charade was an elaborate one, as the hospital staff (including the nurses and Lester Sheehan, who posed as Andrew’s partner, Chuck) also took part in playing into Andrew’s delusions. And his migraines? Withdrawal symptoms of not taking his prescribed medication while Cawley and the other doctors allowed him to live out his fantasy. But once again confronted with his terrible memories and the truth of his reality, Andrew faints and awakens in the hospital with Cawley. While Andrew seems willing to accept the truth, Cawley admits that he and the other doctors helped Andrew to achieve this similar tranquil state months prior, though he quickly regressed. If he regresses again, Cawley warns, they will have no other choice but to lobotomize him.
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“You know what? I’m not leaving… I’m not leaving.”
At first, all appears to be going well with Andrew’s progress…but it’s not long before he begins to regress. He begins to talk about his need to leave the island, hinting that he is once again retreating further into his mind and the “Teddy” persona. And just as Cawley warned, this really was Andrew’s last chance. A disappointed Cawley consults with Ashecliffe’s warden, andAndrew is taken away by the facility’s orderlies for lobotomizationto permanently put an end to the vicious cycle of guilt and delusions that plague him.
What’s Going On at the End of ‘Shutter Island’?
Whew.It’s an incredibly bleak ending, but one that may not be as final as it may first appear. Was Andrewreallylobotomized? The film’s last shot lingering on the lighthouse where the procedure will take place is incredibly ominous (as is the accompanying score) and seems to hint at Andrew’s eventual operation, but since we don’t actually see it happen,we don’t know for sure. Regardless,Shutter Islandforces its characters — and viewers —to question what is real and what is imagined, but even more importantly, it raises the question of what it truly means to be insane. Is it a mental imbalance? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Or maybe it’s the constant pursuit to rise above adversity when everyone tries to push you down. Whatever we believe, the truth, like Andrew’s complex emotions and mental state, isn’t always so simple.
‘Shutter Island’ May Have an Unspoken, Second Twist
A fair reading of the ending would be that Andrew’s treatment was unsuccessful, and that he is tragically pulled away from a chance at redemption when he is taken away to be lobotomized. Butmaybe it is ultimately Andrew who decides his own fate? One line in the film extends the likelihood that Andrew is actually aware of his crimes, that the treatment was successful, and that he is willfully submitting himself to the procedure because he would rather not live with what he has done. Having succeeded at the unique exposure therapy, Andrew comes out with a conscious understanding of his wife’s actions against their children, and that he killed her in the aftermath. Filled with guilt and exhaustion at accepting this reality, Andrew seemingly decides to pretend he is still trapped within his delusion so he can essentially end his life.
DiCaprio delivers this moment with a beautiful amount of nuance, as Andrew looks over to Chuck and, after regressing back into his Teddy Daniels persona, flashes a moment of cutting clarity, asking, “is it better to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?” Chuck recognizes that something more may be going on, but Andrew has already made his choice, and all Chuck can do is watch on, never knowing for certain if they were condemning a man who could still be redeemed. Perhapsin Andrew’s mind, the procedure was his only chance at redemption.There isn’t a definitive way of making sense ofShutter Island’s final moments.It’s a slightly different ending than the book, ultimately leaving the choice up to the viewer whether they want to accept Andrew’s decision or presume that he did slip back into his delusions. What makes the film so haunting is that regardless of your interpretation, it is still a tragic and horrible fate for the character.
Martin Scorsese Made the Ending Far More Ambiguous Than the Book Version
Shutter Islandis adapted from a 2003 novel by Dennis Lahane. The book and the movie follow the same story for the most part, with only minor details changed for the sake of fitting better to the medium of film. Scorsese maintained Lahane’s overall vision, but he also put in extra effort to make our point-of-view character more tragic and open to interpretation. In the book, the ending is fairly clear-cut. Lahane wrote the ending to clearly depict that Andrew does recede into his delusional persona, which renders the whole experiment a failure. Scorsese wanted to make the ending more ambiguous,although Lahane still maintainsthat he believes Andrew did not recover from his mental illness.
In an interview around the time of the film’s release, Lahane said, “Personally, I think he has a momentary flash. To me that’s all it is.It’s just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions,” emphasizing that the question of whether it is better to die a good man is asked in a rhetorical manner, to deliberately muddy the waters of whether he is conscious or not. Lahane’s readers had more of an open-shut experience, but Scorsese writes the ending in a manner that leaves us questioning whether Andrew gives in to what is essentially a suicide, or continues to believe in his false reality as a coping mechanism.
Shutter Islandis currently available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
