I think, as mentioned earlier in About page,  Teddy has been totally sane throughout the narrative. He had been acting out and playing along the institution’s game.

by Lorna Q. Israel

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island is a probe into the mind of the criminally insane within the psycho-social structures of a mental facility. It magnifies insanity as the perfect defence from the moral and ethical dilemmas that lurk within a social world that is divided between enemies and defenders, defeated and victors.

Just as algebra employs literal and numerical symbols to stand for the unknown, Shutter Island investigates that unknown by putting algebra at the service of psychiatry. Its plot evolves from the interrogative statement ‘the law of four. who is 67?’ Suggestively algebraic, it is written on a piece of paper that is divided into four squares by a fold in the middle. A simple numerology reveals that the unknown part of the statement is also the law of four: 6+7=4. It is attributed to one Rachel Solando who is both the insane (Emily Mortimer) and the psychiatrist (Patricia Clarkson). Rachel Solando is a 6+7 name. Between the psychotic and the psychiatrist, who is 67? The question is also the answer is what Rachel’s law for four is all about.

Shutter Island is the location of Ashecliffe Hospital, a mental facility for the criminally insane. The hospital’s name heralds the Arabic root of algebra: al jebr or the reunification of fragments. Set in the 1950s Boston, Ashecliffe Hospital’s “radical mission” is to bring together four variables that might rehabilitate the criminally insane: moral, legal, criminal, and clinical care. On the island, the insane criminal is called patient. Finding a missing patient, however, is not within its expertise. Assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation is sought to investigate the disappearance of the mad and potentially dangerous Rachel Solando. Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to lead the investigation, with Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) as partner.

Rachel’s law of four implies the formation of a triangle and a square. This is exposed right at the beginning of the film with the emergence of the ferry. It is gradually released by a miasma of thick fog, its sail and forward end forming a triangular outline. The ferry is to take Teddy and Chuck to the horizontally shaped Shutter Island. The camera quickly pans the island, which is the only time the viewer will see it from the outside. On deck, a triangle is immediately formed by the captain (at the tip) advising Teddy and Chuck (at the base) to disembark quickly due to a coming storm. On screen, it looks like only Teddy and Chuck are listening to the captain’s words. But there are actually four men facing each other. Teddy has an-other self; the two of them climb the deck after a bout of seasickness.

Following Rachel’s law of four, entrance to Shutter Island is also the exit. The gateway is geometric, suggesting the imprint of a triangle inside a square. It attains a human form in the scene where Teddy and Chuck stand side by side in front of Warden McPherson (John Carrol Lynch) who briefs them about the island’s protocol. The warden’s authority is established by placing him at the apex of the triangle. The close-up shot of his back establishes the scope of his authority on the island. Forming the square shape are the two guards standing behind Teddy and Chuck. This scene effectively encloses them inside a triangle. This means that their movements and whereabouts on the island are strictly regulated by the warden.

On the way to Ashcliffe Hospital aboard a square-shaped service vehicle, Teddy’s mind literally attains a full screen proportion. This is referentially established by extreme close-up and green screen shots of the island’s interior. Teddy immediately informs Chuck that the island’s perimeter is electrified. He has “seen something like it before.” Indeed, a fragment of the island is visible on Teddy’s tie. Framed by his suit, it is embellished by a vibrant floral print at the bottom where it takes the shape of an inverted triangle. It is a vibrant contrast to the forlorn vegetation of Shutter Island.

The search party is escorted by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the psychiatrist in charge of the most lethal and damaged patients. Following the law of four, a four way inspection of Rachel Solando’s room is conducted: Teddy looks out to the window, Chuck on the floor, Dr. Cawley on the ceiling while an orderly stands guard near the slightly opened door. The position of the orderly near the door is meant for the viewer. Shot from above, this scene creates an impression that Rachel has been allowed exit. The search does not yield anything, except for the piece of paper with the law of four written on it. Dr. Cawley concludes that Rachel has “evaporated straight through the wall.” The wall does not speak. Teddy and Chuck do not examine it.

Viewers are made to understand that people know about Shutter Island but unwilling to talk about it. Chuck thinks that the islanders are ‘folks who hear voices’ while Teddy proclaims them the “perfect subject because they talk but no one listens to them.”  The film’s sound motif amplifies the encounter of the perfect subject’s unheard voice and the investigators who greatly rely on what people are willing to say.

The significance of sound is heard right at the film’s beginning when the ferry makes a full screen appearance. One long blasting signal announces its arrival, which spookily suggests it is in distress. The soundtrack puts into words that distress signal, which is played in sequences where characters are silent or not speaking. Some of the titles of the track list are instructive: Ingram Marshall’s “Fog Tropes,” John Cage’s “Root of an Unfocus,” György Ligeti’s “Lontano,” which also means distance. With no original score, the music in Shutter Island heightens the interplay between the familiar and fragments of ‘what has Teddy seen before.’  Distance is effectively maintained by the staff and patients whose voices do not provide the investigators satisfactory answers. Like the wall of Rachel Solando’s room, they are impenetrable and unreachable in the triangular set-up where Teddy questions them.

Having established the geometric plane of Shutter Island, the film intensifies  Teddy’s psychiatric plane. The lead investigator is to become the object of an-other investigation. After a heavy downpour of rain that drenched his official outfit, he is supplied by the white uniform worn by staff and orderlies. It virtually makes him a blank slate, which also clarifies for the viewer his psychiatric history. Part of it is the official history that glorifies winning a war. Teddy is a fragmented part of this. He defies his conscience, which sways him to spare the lives of disarmed Nazi officers and soldiers. This is bluntly conveyed by an extreme close-up shot of Teddy’s baffled and shocked face while he delays triggering his rifle   aimed at a wounded Nazi officer.

Just as the Jews were killed mercilessly, their killers are also made to suffer the same fate. Chuck receives an update on the moral significance of this historical event: it was a warfare that was not at all warfair; it was simply mass murder. Indeed, Shutter Island underscores a situation in which those with no means to defend themselves are being killed, including disarmed enemies. Awake or asleep, these historical events that are also personal events flash in Teddy’s mind. They are a scapegoat within a scapegoat. The Jews were the Nazi’s scapegoat, killing the Nazis as Teddy’s scapegoat for drinking and neglecting his wife (Michele Williams). His wife’s murder of their children is Teddy’s reason for killing her.

Dr. Cawley completes the entirety of Teddy’s psychiatric history. As Dr. Cawley, Kingsley delivers a calm and resolute vocal performance. With sole access to the building where the insane criminals are calmed down or comforted, Dr. Cawley intimately knows their damaged and damaging disposition. Hence, Kingsley’s vocally orchestrated portrayal. In contrast, DiCaprio delivers an overdosed acting, which is a sensible approach to Teddy’s mental state of affairs. Medium to extreme close-up shots and the deliberate use of green screen effects not only convey the immensity of Teddy’s mind; it also makes the viewer an inmate of that immensity. It is Ruffalo’s understated performance that provides a relief, if not a balancing, contrast to DiCaprio’s.

As Dr. Cawley soberly enumerates, one of Teddy’s names also conforms to the 6+7 formula. Rachel’s law of four accompanies Teddy as he slowly walks to Ashcliffe Hospital. Indeed, no mind is an island. By this time, Teddy has finally become one Shutter Islander as he is shown wearing a dark grey suit. The thick fog marks the beginning of the trip to Shutter Island is replaced by the dark grey and ominous atmosphere that marks the beginning of Teddy’s approach to Ashcliffe Hospital. At this point, any geometric outline or shape is no longer perceptible.

Rachel’s law of four dictates that the criminally insane is bound to disappear into a wall that would not speak. By not shattering that wall, Scorsese seems to have played the role of a psycho-and geo-metrician. As such, Shutter Island compels a comprehensive mode of attention in which no detail could be dismissed as minor or insignificant. Scorsese makes us inhabit the depth of the psychic and social structures we inhabit.

We are made to witness crimes committed against criminals, to testify that their damaged mind is their own ‘perfect defence,’ which protects the chain of command that plunges one to crime and madness. As Teddy implies to Chuck, an-other’s name for war is mass murder. Its guilt and culpability are entirely borne by the enemies. As Scorsese implies, a damaged mind is a viable means of voiding the guilt or responsibility—of the victors.  In Shutter Island, finality or closure is shuttered.  The victor is also the enemy. Imprisonment or death of the few secures the life and freedom of the rest.

Martin Scorsese‘s film is based on a best-selling novel by Dennis Lehane. The book’s protagonist, Teddy Daniels, who’s apparently a US marshal, turns out to be Andrew Laeddis, a demented killer. He’s a patient in a mental hospital who’s been encouraged by his psychiatrist to act out his delusion in the hope that this will dispel it. The role play fails: after a brief recovery, Andrew relapses into insanity and is therefore taken off to be lobotomised.

The film’s been described as faithful to the book, and many cinemagoers seem to have assumed that it’s telling the same story. Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Teddy does indeed turn out to be Andrew. However, before he falls into the clutches of the lobotomists, he utters a line that isn’t in the book. “This place makes me wonder,” he asks, “which would be worse – to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?”

For some, this is to be seen as no more than the rambling of a madman. Others, however, take it as meaning that Andrew’s only faking his relapse. His unusual treatment’s made him aware of the terrible thing he’s done: guilt has therefore engulfed him, and he’s deliberately getting himself lobotomised to escape it.

These two versions of what the film means could hardly be more at odds. Yet Scorsese hasn’t chosen to indicate which is the right one. Nor has DiCaprio. Perhaps the latter isn’t sure himself. He found his role traumatising, and told an interviewer: “I remember saying to Marty, ‘I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing.’”

Lehane is credited as one of the film’s executive producers, so you might think he at least would know what’s going on. Sadly, even he doesn’t seem wholly certain: he explains that he stayed out of the scripting process. When pushed, he tries to reconcile DiCaprio’s gnomic inquiry with his own original story. “Personally, I think he has a momentary flash,” he suggests. “To me that’s all it is. It’s just one moment of sanity mixed in the midst of all the other delusions.”

As it happens, just how to end the film was much debated by those more directly involved. One of these was Scorsese’s psychiatric adviser, Professor James Gilligan of New York University. On a visit to the location where most of the film was shot, the now-abandoned Medfield state hospital in Massachusetts, I asked the professor what was really supposed to be happening. His answer was clear cut.

Andrew does indeed choose his fate. According to Gilligan, those cryptic last words mean: “I feel too guilty to go on living. I’m not going to actually commit suicide, but I’m going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who’re going to lobotomise me.” Gilligan says that people who kill others in the way Andrew has don’t realise what they’re doing at the time. If treatment returns them to their senses, guilt may then overwhelm them.

For Gilligan, the correct reading is important. Shutter Island is set in the 1950s. During that era, severe mental disturbances were often dealt with physically. In America, more than 40,000 patients were lobotomised over a 30-year period. However, progressives were pushing for the replacement of such methods by less ruinous remedies. Andrew’s doctor (played by Ben Kingsley) is one of these. His role-play experiment is a test case. If it works, non-invasive treatment will have proved itself. If it fails, the lobotomists’ position will be reinforced.

This debate shows some signs of being rekindled: growing understanding of brain physiology is reawakening interest in tinkering with its workings. Gilligan, however, is firmly opposed to this trend, and keen to see psychosocial treatments defended. Shutter Island the book shows such a treatment failing. The film, according to Gilligan, shows it succeeding, at least in dispelling delusion.

A second look at the film suggests that Gilligan’s reading must be right. In his final murmurings, DiCaprio is clearly trying to act as if he’s acting. After uttering that last line, he leaps up and strides purposefully into the midst of the waiting lobotomists; they don’t have to jump him. So why all the mystery? Why weren’t things just made a little bit clearer?

Perhaps we can guess. According to Gilligan, “Martin Scorsese said this film will make double the income because people will have to see it a second time to understand what happened the first time.” So Marty at least may have known what he was doing. Shutter Island has already become his highest-grossing picture to date.