TLDR - There aren't clear answers to these questions. The movie is left ambiguous. Those who believe the doctors will have different answers from those who see the doctors are unreliable expositors. The viewer has to decide for himself/herself what these things mean.
These are all good questions. I'm responding because these are some of the usual questions viewers have after watching Shutter Island.
Why does the officer pick him up, then give him a strange speech about violence, and gives him hypothetical questions about fighting him? He even tells him "Dr Cawley thinks you can be controlled"?
One thing we learn from the Warden in that scene is that Cawley wants to
control Teddy, which is not at all the same as wanting to heal him or cure him. While the Warden seems to support surgery to control Teddy, Cawley appears to want to control him psychologically and maybe chemically. Same difference - either way the goal would be a docile, compliant individual, not a healthy human being that could think for himself.
The Warden is trying to antagonize Teddy probably to increase his anxiety and further confuse and frighten him. Psychological stress. The Warden's behavior also brings into question the idea that Teddy is as dangerous as the doctors say. Why would the warden, alone, try to provoke the most dangerous and violent man on the island? That makes no sense.
That then leads to the question of why they would want to lobotomize a patient who isn't violent - what do they really want to control? Most likely, Teddy presents a danger to the staff because he is threatening to expose them. If he is lobotomized who would believe him? If he is identified as "insane" who will believe him? If Cawley can successfully convince Teddy that
he is the problem, not them, then that neutralizes the threat as well. This idea is reflected, too, in the audience's tendency to focus on Teddy's sanity rather than the question of the ethics of the experiment done on Teddy (the only experiment we see and all we have to go by).
Why does Chuck antagonize Teddy in the mausoleum during the storm? He seems to be purposefully putting paranoid, strange thoughts into his mind and yelling at him?
Good questions all, GCrockergirl. This is not something they would do if he was really delusional. Remember that they claim he is so delusional and so resistant to treatment that he needs this epic, dangerous mind game to have any chance of helping him see reality.
He would never need to have his supposed delusions suggested to him if these ideas were really his. The fact that they suggest ideas to him that they later claim are his delusions is very suspicious and should make the audience question the truth of what the doctors are claiming about Teddy, especially since they have no reliable supporting information for their claims. Not only do they have to suggest his "delusions" to him, he resists believing these when they are suggested. That's not the way delusions work.
Delusion -
an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder. The screenplay makes a point of having Teddy's original suspicions be a "guess" that they were doing unethical mind experiments. That shows that he is NOT delusional because delusions are
firmly held beliefs, not "guesses". Anything beyond his "guess" about unethical experiments was information he received on the island during the role-play itself.
So, Teddy isn't delusional. At the most, before Chuck, Noyce and cave woman suggested more, all Teddy says is that he has a "guess" that they are doing unethical human mind experiments on the mentally ill at Ashecliffe. That is absolutely consistent with the historical context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltraTeddy's suspicions were not at all far-fetched. In fact, what he suspected was less than what the government was really doing.
Shutter Island is historical fiction and the real historical context is a major aspect of the story - the 1954 zeitgeist, the possibility that Naerhing is an Nazi Operation Paperclip researcher, the red scare, the fact that the government really was doing unethical human experiments in violation of the Nuremberg Code, are all suggested by the historical context of the story itself. Teddy has probably just stumbled upon covert experiments that the government was able to keep secret for another two decades after 1954.
Why does the husband killer write "Run" on his notepad? Where did she think he could run? She was doing that just to be mean?
They were using Kearns in the role-play. She was playing a part. I don't know if writing RUN was part of her role or if she was really trying to get a message to Teddy. At that point she may have thought Teddy was still able to leave the island. I don't think we can tell for sure, but it could easily be part of the role-play because they were definitely trying to make Teddy paranoid so they could use that against him to make him think he was crazy.
Why does "Rachel Solando" hug Teddy, and he seems to connect with her? Why is she associated in his dreams, when she seems to b just be another patient?
Most everyone assumes that the missing Rachel Solando in the chart picture is really a nurse. This may not be the case. She could really be a patient. She could be playing a nurse in her own role-play. The actress playing her said she played that scene real, not as if she was a nurse acting a part. It appears that they use patients in the role-plays as a sort of milieu "therapy". In fact, can we even know for sure the difference between staff and patients? How many of those nurses and orderlies are playing roles as their own "treatment"?
No matter if she is acting or not, the purpose she serves in Teddy's "role-play" is to connect Teddy to the idea that he is her husband. This is a step on the way to getting Teddy to believe that his wife is really the woman who killed her children. His dream later that night shows that he has subconsciously moved into the role of the child killer's husband. The only thing left to do is get him to replace Rachel with Delores. This is what the anagrams are supposed to be for.
In any event, her mixed messages, hugging him and then going off on him, served to add to Teddy's confusion. I hold the unpopular opinion that she is really a patient named Rachel something. Maybe Solando. Teddy got ahead of the game so they had to introduce him to Rachel early and may not have been completely prepared. Rachel became agitated and violent, which went beyond what they intended. Note that Teddy has two serious headaches for which Cawley gives him an unknown medication. The first time was after Teddy saw Rachel's picture in the chart and the second was after he met her in her room.
Interestingly, when he dreamed of Rachel after being given drugs for his "migraine", she looked like she did in the picture, not like she looked in real life. I have wondered if Teddy even remembers the encounter with Rachel in her room. We learn that Teddy has dreams based on photographs - and he colorizes. His dream images of the children could simply mean that he has seen the photos that Cawley has.
How and why did someone put a tiny note in "Rachel Solando's" room? How was Teddy able to find it so quickly? Why did one man joke/laugh about the Law of 4?
Most people think what the doctors want Teddy to eventually believe - that it was his room and that he left the note there. If you watch closely, there is some misleading editing and a swoosh sound that leads people to assume that Teddy finds the note quickly and goes straight for it. That's not actually what the film shows. Teddy was systematically checking the room for loose tiles - he didn't find it quickly. He was going to find the note eventually because he was doing a careful investigation.
The possibilities are:
1. "Andrew" left the note for "Teddy" to find. It was Andrew's room. Men and women are not in the same building, so that seems unlikely to me that they are showing Teddy Rachel's room as part of the role-play and it is on the men's ward. Also, they gave patients assigned hospital garb and "Andrew" would probably not have had street shoes in his room. The men's shoes are part of the role-play staging thus meaningless as to what is real.
2. The doctors left the note in the room they claim is Rachel's as part of their manipulation assuming or hoping Teddy would find it.
3. Rachel left the note. It seems that Cawley was surprised and wanted to take the note from Teddy. The note may have given the doctors the law of four idea they were so fond of. To call the anagrams "the law of four" is...just lame. Aristotle had a law of four. It is about associations and recall.
I don't think there is a way to tell where the note really came from. If you believe the doctors, it came from "Andrew". If you don't believe the doctors it was either left by the doctors as part of the role-play or Rachel really is a patient who left the note in her room.
The one doctor said he "loved" the law of four, because the anagrams were a major part of their manipulation of Teddy. They thought it was a clever thing they thought of. It is unlikely that the doctor would have said he loved a patient's delusion especially if the delusion was causing them so much trouble and getting people hurt.
The fact that Cawley staged the draped whiteboard that he dramatically uncovered in the lighthouse shows how important the anagrams were
to the doctors. However, by the time the board was unveiled, the law of four was irrelevant for the doctor's purpose because Teddy thought Rachel Solando was a falsely imprisoned whistlebower psychiatrist, not a crazy woman that killed her kids. They didn't anticipate that Teddy would think the woman in the cave was Rachel because they had told him that Rachel had been found. Teddy had seen her. Notice that both the woman in the cave and Cawley are taken aback because Teddy assumes she is Rachel Solando.
Is there any reason they never gave Teddy his original clothes back?
It is a brainwashing thing. They want him to give up the identity of Marshal Edward Daniels. They said they were going for this look in the costuming - 50s movie noir.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/3de76592082021b828c738ef04e52407/tumblr_nf6qzkuoxh1qcgwn4o1_500.jpg One of the ways they take him away from his marshal role is to take away his "uniform", because his clothes are associated with his role as a marshal. They put him in a uniform that identifies him with an orderly - someone with less power - they also gave them a choice to wear the gray uniforms the patients wear.
What was the point of him following and beating that patient? The patient tells him he doesn't want to leave, then talks about the hydrogen bomb? Who is he and why?
By that time Teddy had already been in the controlled environment for two days so he probably wasn't acting as he normally would. It appears to me that Chuck didn't expect Teddy to chase the patient. It could be that the chase was something unexpected that happened. Maybe Teddy was acting on instinct since he has been told that these people are dangerous and his job is to capture and control dangerous people.
Maybe his judgement was off because of the drugs and psychological stress. We know that cops step over the line when it comes to violence all too often - it doesn't mean that they are mentally ill. Teddy could be one of these over-reacting cops. He appears to have been one of the over-reactors involved in the Dachau massacre, so it could be he is an aggressive personality without being psychotically violent.
That scene has a few other purposes. First, they want to make Teddy (and the audience) believe that he is a violent and dangerous man (whether he is or not).
*We learn that if Andrew is as dangerous and violent as they say then they were taking real risk with the lives of patients and staff by giving him the run of the island.
*That incident showed that the experiment was life threatening - Teddy could have killed the patient or the patient could have killed Teddy. They should have definitely stopped the experiment after that. The scene makes it unambiguous that they are violating the Nuremberg Code, so the "role-play" is by definition an unethical human experiment. The audience can know that the role-play the doctors describe is itself an unethical human experiment on the mind because they should have stopped it when it was clear it was life-threatening. Note how guilty Cawley looks when Teddy tells Lester that he risked his life for him.
*The experiment should be set up in a way that avoids unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injuries.
*It should not be conducted when there is any reason to believe that it implies a risk of death or disabling injury. From the Nuremberg Code
Finally, both Kearns and the Ward C patient, Billings, make comments that show the audience that Ashecliffe is a
controlled milieu - the first criteria for thought reform (brainwashing) as identified by Lifton:
Milieu (Environmental) Control -
All communication with outside world is limited, either being strictly filtered or completely cut off. Whether it is a monastery or a behind-closed-doors cult, isolation from the ideas, examples and distractions of the outside world turns the individuals attention to the only remaining form of stimulation, which is the ideology that is being inculcated in them. Neither Billings nor Kearns wants to leave the island because they both think that they are safe from nukes - where are they getting that idea? Kearns says "
they say" there are bombs that turn cities to ash - and this is 9 years after the bombs were dropped on Japan! What does she mean "THEY SAY..."? Anyone with normal access to information would have known the bomb was a fact not a rumor. She also shows little understanding of what TV is, associating it with voices coming from her head rather than a source of information not controlled by the doctors. Add these comments to the switchboard scene that establishes that Teddy has no access to the mainland or any information not controlled by the island authority and it is established that Shutter Island is the sort of information controlled environment necessary for thought reform (brainwashing).
The goals of thought reform is to get the subjects to CHOOSE to do what the authority wants. The authority on Shutter Island appears to be either telling the patients or allowing them to believe that they are safe from nukes on the island - so they don't want to leave.
What is the point of the cave scene? He hallucinates Chuck's dead body, rats, fire and warmth? The woman is also a hallucination but why?
Teddy was on the way to the lighthouse. I don't think that this is where the climax was supposed to be staged. They needed time to set up, so the cave scene was another act in the play to stall for time to get set up in the top room. It also serves as another opportunity to make Teddy suspicious and further demoralize him - he has no friends; the government is too powerful; it is futile to resist.
I don't think he hallucinates Chuck's body. He was under stress, and may have been drugged with something that affected his perceptions. In any event, what Teddy experiences was an
illusion of a body. His eyes were playing tricks on him causing him to misidentify the reflection off the water as Chuck's white clad body.
There are rats on islands - it is a big problem - and the novel makes it clear that there really were rats on Shutter Island - so there is no reason to think he was hallucinating rats. Cawley doesn't say that the woman in the cave is a hallucination. He says she isn't real. She isn't real if she is a role-player - which is what she probably is because that's the way she fits into the role-play - much the same way that Chuck and Noyce fit in - they feed him information to make him more suspicious and anxious - Chuck on purpose and Noyce probably incidentally. If Teddy has visual hallucinations, they are only of Dolores and maybe the little girl and he KNOWS that they aren't real. The scene in the cave is shot realistically, Teddy thinks it is real (unlike his hallucinations of Delores). There is no reason provided in the film to assume there wasn't someone physically present in the cave with Teddy.
Did they ever tell us how he got that cut on his forehead? There is a small bandaid covering it for a majority of the film?
They never say why the bandaid is on his forehead. Those who believe the doctors think it was probably from the fight he had with Noyce two weeks before. The bandaid was fresh when we see Teddy in the mirror on the ferry, so my guess is that they did something to Teddy right before we see him - maybe what made him sick.
If you think the doctors are telling the truth then the bandaid represents his fractured mental state and it falls off once he accepts reality. However, if that's the case then the the narrative should have an explanation for the bandaid.
By omitting an explanation for the bandage we have a sort of Chekov's Bandaid if we accept the doctors as reliable expositors. There would be an innocent reason that supported their story. In fact, even if they
are lying, they could have made up an innocent reason. It might not be true, but it would have left it ambiguous and would at least have filled a plot hole for those who believe the doctors.
The fact that we have a question with absolutely no answer provided is most likely because the answer isn't innocent as far as the doctors are concerned. No explanation for the bandaid is as close as this movie can come to telling the audience that the injury is due to some invasive procedure that's affecting Teddy's mind. In other words, because we get all our explanations from the doctors, missing information will probably not support what the doctors want Teddy to believe is true. If the bandaid is because the doctors harmed Teddy as part of their mind experiment on him, the characters who know the reason for the bandaid will not admit it to Teddy, they will either lie or omit the information, so the audience won't get an explanation either.
If the reason for the bandage is something like a burn from ECT that they used to wipe his memories, a lobotomy, or an implant, we would get no explanation in the film, because the audience is not told anything that Teddy isn't told. Since Teddy is never told anything that conflicts with the doctor's Andrew lake narrative, the audience won't have that information either. Any information they are keeping from Teddy will also be kept from the audience. Our only advantage over Teddy is that we have hindsight and historical context, so we can infer possibilities that wouldn't have occurred to Teddy.
Those are all good questions. Scorsese said one of the questions he was asking with this film is "who do we believe?" "Who do we believe in movies?" I don't believe the doctors. I know that what they do to Teddy in the movie is unethical
even if he is Andrew and
even if he is "insane". Given the way the story is told, unless the guilty characters come clean with Teddy and admit the truth, there will be no reliable explanation because the characters who know will never say. Like Teddy, the audience is forced to decide what is real and true without anyway to reality check.
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Jandersonu2
8 years ago
Hi, I've been reading the threads on this film and think a good case has been made that he really is Teddy and the doctors and island staff are in cahoots to make him seem crazy. But if that true, I have a few questions, and since this thread seems like a bunch of rational people, I'm asking here. So if he really is Teddy Daniels, US Marshall, then...
1) was he just the unfortunate soul who got sent to Shutter Island to investigate the missing patient (who was actually a conciencously objecting psychiatrist)? So they looked into his past once he was assigned to the case, and found the tragedy of his wife dying and WW2 service and played into that?
2) The staff at SI knew did this because they knew anyone the US Marshalls sent over would discover their unethical treatment of patients and report them/shut them down/have them arrested. And the unethical treatment ranged from lobotomies to chemically controlling patients for experimental purposes, possibly for military applications.
3) his "partner" really was Dr. Sheehan, in either way you look at this film? Who drugged Teddy or something on the boat ride to the island to kick off his chemical imbalance?
4) if the story the lady in the cave told was true, that she was a doctor from a respected family, who went "crazy" and became a patient, why would her going missing be reported at all? Family and friends couldn't visit her, she wasn't allowed any contact with the outside world, so why and how did this become a matter for the US Marshalls? This is my biggest hang-up for the he-really-is-Teddy theory. I can believe the staff were all against him to protect their illegal operation, but I don't see why a US Marshall or even a policeman was called in for this. Who notices or cares (or reports) if a mental patient goes missing on an island with no communication with the outside world?
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Jandersonu2
8 years ago
Never mind, I just read the answer to my question on a different thread. If you buy the TiT argument, he was not a random guy selected to handle this, but chosen deliberately (based on his background) to "investigate" the "missing person" at SI because he was a great candidate for testing their latest brainwashing techniques. Interesting theory. I need t watch this movie closely from the beginning and take notes to see which theory I agree with.
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gleamy-jog
8 years ago
I figure the real story is in the movie, but no one's story is 100% true. I think that it is possible that he has been there 2 years that he doesn't remember because they have been messing with is head and his memories for two years. This is mainly based on the novel, but being there two years doesn't mean that the doctors are telling the truth about anything else.
I think the best explanation for how he originally came to the island is what Chuck tells Teddy in the mausoleum - they lured him to the island with a fake missing patient report knowing he would jump on it. One of the tricks is to make sure he is suspicious of the truth and then pull the rug out from under him by claiming that his accurate suspicions are delusions.
I also think that it is very possible that Dolores was mentally ill and this is a source of his unresolved guilt over her death.
Really, the only difference between Andrew and Teddy is the name and the kids. The kids can be easily explained - the girl is a composite of the real death train child and the girl in the pictures. The boys are just from the pictures - they are always inanimate dead objects. Since Teddy Daniels is a common name and Laeddis isn't, I think he is Teddy. Maybe the maintenance man was named Laeddis, but it may have been spelled differently and may not have been Andrew. The doctors invented the anagrams to connect Teddy to the new identities.
The doctors never show any actual evidence that he is Laeddis or that he has been there two years. They have no evidence that Dolores died at the lake - they had pictures of the kids, they should have shown picture of Dolores showing that she didn't die in the fire like Teddy believes.
We can't say for 100% sure who Teddy is, but we can know for 100% that the only experiment we see in the the movie, the "role-play", is unethical and would actually cause Teddy to become more unstable and no way could it possibly help anyone see reality for himself. If he was crazy, the role-play would make him crazier. If he is sane, the role-play would make him think he was crazy. That means that Teddy's suspicions about unethical experiments weren't delusions.
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
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Jandersonu2
8 years ago
So would you say the only thing we know for sure, we viewers, is that Chuck is really Dr. Sheehan and the doctors were acting unethically?
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gleamy-jog
8 years ago
These are the main points - more than you want to know:
- I think most people think that Chuck is really Sheehan. Since the US Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons that runs Ashecliffe are both agencies of the Justice Department, the Marshals would have been part of the ruse to get him to the island. Just tell him that he will meet his new partner, Chuck Aule from Portland or Seattle, at the ferry. No one will come looking for him because at very high levels of the Justice Department, they know where he is because they are the ones who lured him.
- Since we don't know what happened before the ferry because it isn't in the movie, it is possible that Chuck really was Teddy's partner, and they were both lured maybe two years earlier. Chuck was successfully brainwashed and pulled into the game like Kearns and Breene. It's also possible that he wasn't a doctor but a CIA agent with hypnosis skills. The only reason I think this might be the case is he looked confused by Teddy's headaches and didn't seem to know about migraines which is pretty basic for a physician. I personally don't think Sheehan was ever a Marshal.
- What they call role-play is really mental manipulation and abuse known as brainwashing. People often rewatch the movie looking for evidence of the "role-play", but any evidence of the role-play is also evidence for brainwashing since they are the same thing. Any symptoms of mental illness could also be caused by the role-play itself. If he has been there two years, well they have had two years to mess with his head, so who knows how he was before they got hold of him?
The thing is that the entire film is the manipulation to get Teddy to believe he is Andrew Laeddis. Everything we know about Teddy's identity and backstory we learn in the context of this mind eff. Since the doctors could be lying about the past and Teddy is alleged to be delusional about the past, neither side is reliable to provide a backstory that the audience can be sure of - and it doesn't matter because that isn't what the movie is about - its about the manipulation of Teddy by agents of the government. There needs to be a third party character - someone independent who isn't controlled by the doctors to provide an exposition, and there is no such character in the movie.
These doctors are antagonist characters - for example, they aren't like the psychiatrist in Psycho who shows up at the end to explain Norman's condition. They are characters controlling all the action in the film. We are told they have a lot riding on the experiment on Teddy - they will be discredited and lose everything if they fail. That provides a motivation for doing the experiment that has nothing at all to do with Teddy's mental health or potential lobotomy.
The "role-play" the doctors confess to is definitely unethical. It violates several points of the Nuremberg Code. It is unethical in its very concept since it can't be done if the subject knows whats going on. Even if they call it "treatment" to try to get around the code, Teddy is onto that trick, too. It's not been done before - it is an experiment. Success in this case would mean successfully brainwashing Teddy permanently as part of MKULTRA type mind control experiments. We know now that brainwashing isn't permanent, but maybe they didn't know that in 1954 and this is the theory that Cawley was trying to prove. That theory really was discredited in real life.
It's important to remember the role-play is unethical even if he is crazy Andrew and even if they claim they are trying to help him. Teddy suspects they are experimenting on crazy people and making them worse - he doesn't think they are luring ordinary people to the island and making them subjects of mind experiments - so who Teddy is doesn't matter, since Andrew could be the subject of an unethical experiment same as Teddy.
They aren't trying to help him; they are trying to control him. They don't care if Teddy's memories have really returned - they just want him to conform. We know this because:
* Cawley indicates that he would have been fine with him living his his "fantasy", but he can't because he is dangerous. That doesn't even follow since they have no way of knowing that if he thinks he is Andrew, he won't be dangerous. Besides, Andrew is the bad guy and Teddy is the good guy hero. Why would they think Andrew would be less dangerous than Teddy?
* When they threatened him with a lobotomy if he didn't comply, they can't ever know for sure if his memories really came back or if he just said what he needed to say to avoid a lobotomy. A lot of people who are supposed to be brainwashed are actually lying to get a reward or avoid punishment.
* After the so-called flashback, Teddy says he doesn't remember his previous loop - the doctors don't care that all of his memories haven't returned. Even though he doesn't remember, he seems to believe the doctors and says that Cawley was the only one who tried to help him - he didn't remember, but he believed it anyway. So, is the flashback just the story he was told to confess - an internalized false confession - something he believes because he was brainwashed, but doesn't really remember?
From what we see in the movie they weren't really interested in Teddy's mental health improving - they were ok with him being crazy. They were interested in controlling him, if not by Cawley's psycho-behavioral methods then with a lobotomy.
Brainwashed people don't stay brainwashed, so Teddy probably would "relapse" after he rested and the mental stress stopped or, if he was drugged, after the drugs were out of his system - (if he was drugged - drugs aren't required for brainwashing).
The role-play is the opposite of real therapy to get a person to see reality. It would only confuse him about reality. The role-play is the KNOWN way to brainwash someone. Brainwashing can also be called "thought reform", "re-education", "coercive persuasion", "rape of the mind" and "gaslighting" among other terms. It is an extreme form of social influence and considered mental abuse or mental torture. The role-play adheres to Robert Lifton's "eight criteria for thought reform". He studied the allegedly brainwashed POW's that the woman in the cave referred to and wrote about what he discovered in a book called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China published in 1961. The limits of brainwashing wouldn't have been known in 1954.
The woman in the cave is probably a role-player, and that is why she looks real. Cawley just says she isn't real. He never says she was a hallucination. Anyway, Teddy and the audience always know when he is hallucinating, so she doesn't fit the established pattern. She serves the role-play the same way that Chuck and Noyce do - they stoke his suspicions and serve to demoralize him. She also misleads him about the true nature of the experiments they are doing on Shutter Island. Lobotomies weren't really experimental and weren't used to create "ghosts" or superspies. The drugs she mentions have legitimate uses, so finding those drugs wouldn't necessarily mean they were doing unethical experiments. She fails to mention the true risk - mental manipulation. She didn't expect that Teddy would think she was Rachel Solando which is why she seems confused when he assumes that's who she is.
Cawley says he is dangerous and that is why he will be lobotomized, but the final scene shows that he is calm and cooperative and no one is scared of him - people walk all around him. While Teddy was shown to be tormented by his memory of Dolores from the very first scene in the movie, in the final scene he was serene - he let go of Dolores at the car explosion when he burned his tie.(until Cawley's cruel game brought her back temporarily in the lighthouse).
Scorsese made a point to show he was NOT TORMENTED by his memories in the final scene. He made a point of showing that he was not dangerous in the final scene and was extraordinarily cooperative with his abusers. Teddy thought they were doing something bad and he refused to be a part of it. He could have gone along and done what they wanted. But he is up against the Federal Government, and he knows they will never let him expose them. The consequence of not conforming was a lobotomy, but he knew that not conforming would discredit them and stop the experiments anyway - he outsmarted them. That means that no matter who he is he died a truly good man who sacrificed himself for the good of others, not a phony good man acting out of his own weakness selfish interests.
I think that covers most of the questions people have about the movie. It's pretty clear that the film was meant to be understood on two levels. The conventional understanding satisfies the mainstream audience. This is the level those involved with the film usually talk about publicly. Serious viewers can consider the historical context, science and alternative interpretations for ambiguous information. Everything in the movie fits very well without having to distort or ignore any detail or rely on suspension of disbelief. The film is consistent with real history and real science.
It is pretty straight forward as long as you don't assume the doctors are doing legitimate experiments and treatment and telling the truth about everything. And if you think Teddy is crazy, then don't forget the doctors could be the cause.
Random notes:
- The first thing we learn in the film is that it is 1954 which tells us that the historical context matters. The implications of that date go straight to the political themes in the film. Real history is the only reference point for reality in the film. The government was doing unethical mind experiments on non-consenting people. HUAC, the red scare and McCarthyism was the zeitgeist. Modern, well-funded psychiatric facilities did not keep patients in subhuman conditions like we see on Ward C - that would be unethical and even torture. Doctors would have been well aware of the Nuremberg Code and the ethical standards for human experiments and Americans would have assumed that our doctors and government were abiding by those standards because we thought we were better than the Nazis.
- Teddy tells us who he thinks the monsters are in his confrontation with Naerhing in the hallway. He rejected the idea that he was a monster and threw the label back at the doctors. He isn't sure what they are doing, but he knows it is bad. Living as a monster means the doctors who are abusing their subjects. If Teddy goes along with them he would be a monster, too. A good man is one who stops the bad experiments by sacrificing himself and refusing to go along with something he knows is bad.
- The final word in the film is "Teddy".
- The final shot of the film is an ominous shot of the lighthouse. Apparently, they were taking Teddy to the lighthouse for a lobotomy. (Scorsese says he is going to the lighthouse). So where was the evidence they did lobotomies in the lighthouse when Teddy got there?
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
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Jandersonu2
8 years ago
Thank you for your rational, well explained reply. This movie is fascinating. As you said, you can either take it at face value and be briefly entertained, or get sucked down the rabbit hole of history, psychology, and questioning every line, every glance, every camera angle.
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gleamy-jog
8 years ago
...you can either take it at face value and be briefly entertained, or get sucked down the rabbit hole of history, psychology, and questioning every line, every glance, every camera angle.
Well put, Janderson2!
Don't forget sound, score and lighting!
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
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soggybottom
8 years ago
* After the so-called flashback, Teddy says he doesn't remember his previous loop - the doctors don't care that all of his memories haven't returned. Even though he doesn't remember, he seems to believe the doctors and says that Cawley was the only one who tried to help him - he didn't remember, but he believed it anyway. So, is the flashback just the story he was told to confess - an internalized false confession - something he believes because he was brainwashed, but doesn't really remember?
It's little nuggets of wisdom like this one that never would have occurred to me if it weren't for Gleamer and her persistence on this board to point out all of the inconsistencies with the commonly-accepted story-line that the doctors present.
How can you say that you don't remember the loops, and then you follow it up by saying that Cawley was the only one who tried to help you? Do you remember or don't ya?
The obvious follow-up question that the doctors DON'T ask is "Okay, so exactly what do you remember?" to make sure that he's cured.
There's only two possible explanations: Either they've brainwashed him into believing that they're helping them, or he's still completely messed up in the head.
But the doctors got the answer that they wanted, so either way, they don't care.
This is a HUGE red flag that something is wrong here.
The same thing happens when Teddy comes back from the cave and encounters Cawley...
Speaking of which, have you seen him, doctor?
Who?
My partner Chuck.
You don't have a partner, marshal. You came here alone. You know--I've built something valuable here, and valuable things have a way of being misunderstood in their own time. Everyone wants a quick fix--They always have. I'm trying to do something that people (yourself included) don't understand, and I'm not going to give up without a fight.
I can see that.
So tell me again about your partner.
What partner?
The obvious follow-up question here is "The partner that you're so determined to find?", but that question never comes. Teddy gives him the answer that he wants, so Cawley lets him go.
Yep, Teddy successfully outsmarts the doctor who supposedly knew every detail of the loops that Teddy has been playing out over and over for two years straight, yet he was easily played for a fool this time.
And there's more to that scene... Cawley puts him through this elaborate "role-play" experiment and says at the end how important it is that Teddy get cured, yet he's gonna forget that easily which partner Teddy is talking about?
Of course he knew exactly which partner that Teddy was talking about!
There's only one possible explanation--Cawley is trying to bully Teddy into accepting the lie that he's feeding him, and if he doesn't accept, he gets put away. But Teddy was on to him and quickly gave the right answer, and Cawley (amazingly) accepted it. This never came up in any of the previous loops?
So you put these scenes together (along with a helluva lot more that we haven't even touched on yet), and you get Brainwashing 101. Yet there are people who have been posting on this board for years who still refuse to see it.
They think that you can't brainwash anyone unless you torture the hell out of them and deprive them of basic needs. It doesn't have to be that drastic--I've seen it first-hand!
It's gonna be sad to see these boards go--especially you Gleamer. Thank you so much for all of your time and hard work dissecting this movie (and putting up with A LOT of crap and responding to it with pure class) over the years. If there were more Gleamers on these boards (and less You-Know-Whos), I bet IMDb wouldn't have made this decision.
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gleamy-jog
8 years ago
I do appreciate you, soggy. There haven't been enough open-minded posters here, I'm afraid.
One of the big red flags in this movie is how the doctors don't do what we would expect them to do if they are really trying to help Andrew. Besides the details you refer to, the fact that they never provide emotional support for "Andrew" at what must be the lowest point of his life. His memories were so overwhelming he dissociated. They inculcate false guilt - the "guilt complex" was considered a major neurosis at the time. That makes no sense. They also never show compassion for Teddy/Andrew or provide any emotional support to help him deal with his losses as his memories returned. Instead, at the time they should have been focusing on Andrew and the emotional fallout from the return of his traumatic memories, THEY FOCUS ON THEMSELVES. They will be discredited and lose everything! They ask a man who is acutely disturbed in the midst of a major emotional crisis to DO THEM A FAVOR. They will lose EVERYTHING unless "Andrew" goes along with what they want! They treat him as if all he has to do to not be mentally ill is just decide not to be -either to avoid a lobotomy or to keep them from losing their program and professional reputations.
Why haven't viewers questioned the cruelty of the "you have no partner" or Cawley taunting "Andrew" with "why you all wet baby?" Or Sheehan yelling impatiently to "Andrew" as he described the alleged trauma that caused him to dissociate? Or how cold they are to him as they demand his confession and his assurance that he won't "relapse"? Or that threats don't cure mental illness?
Since Cawley said he wished Teddy could keep his delusions if he could, but because he was dangerous, they wanted to lobotomize him, why did Scorsese go out of his way in the final scene to show us that he was NOT dangerous when they took him away? He was calm and serene even - staff walked all around him unafraid. The answer has always been - they knew him so well they knew he would be violent in the future. But they didn't know him well enough to know that he would have preferred a lobotomy to their "cure"?
Lots of people are critical of the movie because there are so many details that don't add up. Every one of these disappointed viewers presume that the superficial explanation is the only way to see it. The common understanding isn't a serious movie at all. I hope that in time, the film will be appreciated for its actual genius. As it is, the crummy genre thriller plot is actually the story made up by amateurs - the characters of the doctors - they are the ones who created the lame anagrams (the law of 4 the doctor loved so much), an unrealistic mental illness and an unverifiable back story. But, if a viewer keeps an open mind and realizes that the doctors can't provide a reliable exposition because they are antagonists who would lie to cover-up the unethical experiments Teddy suspects, then all the details have a place - no suspension of disbelief required.
Bye, all!
Are they slow? Yeah, they're dead. They're all messed up.
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Dazed_are_numbered
8 years ago
The really enormous problem with a Teddy is Teddy theory is that it raises more questions than it answers,as you yourself found out.
There is nothing in the film that suggests that Teddy was actually specially selected and would never be missed by anyone ever, nor is there anything to suggest that the US Marshals decided to be "in" on the whole plan to send him there as a Guinea Pig.
There is no actual brain washing shown,in fact the doctors are never shown to be doing anything remotely close to brainwashing.What's more is nobody who believes Teddy is Teddy has ever been able to say exactly where the brainwashing takes place!
Anything that fills in the massive chasm that is the TiT theory is pure fan fiction I'm afraid.
Teddy is not Teddy,the writers,actors,film makers have all confirmed that the story is that Teddy is really Andrew a former US marshal who killed his wife after she murdered their children. He was committed to Ashecliffe as a criminally insane patient who had invented an alter ego called Teddy Daniels.The doctors were attempting a last ditch attempt to bring him back to reality using role play to save him from a lobotomy.
Although there's been rain and it's coming again
Change has to be here obviously
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