Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Discussion Question #2: Vague/Ambiguous

I recently watched the movie "Shutter Island", a psychological thriller directed by Martin Scorsese. I enjoyed its novel counterpart and was certainly pleased with seeing the imagery I had while reading the book come to life on the big screen. It's a very thought-provoking story about a man with very severe psychological issues due to his estranged wife murdering their children. He then kills his wife after realizing there is something severely wrong with her. Instead of coming to terms with what happened, he creates an entire fantasy scenario that constantly replays in his mind. In it, he is a detective trying to find a missing woman at a very secure mental prison on a remote island. In reality, he's actually a patient there.

When the doctors are finally able to break through to Teddy, they await to see if he "relapsed" back into his fantasy world. If he had, he would be lobotomized. The ending scene of the movie is of Teddy sitting next to Dr. Sheehan. He turns to the doctor and refers to him as "Chuck", which signaled to the other doctors he had relapsed into his fantasy world. However, the last line of the movie is very ambiguous and leaves much up to the imagination. Knowing he will be lobotomized, Teddy stands up and says, "Chuck, is it better to live as a monster or to die a good man?". It's an ambiguous statement as it leaves us questioning if he actually relapsed or not. In my opinion he didn't relapse and instead faked returning to his fantasy world not only out of fear of relapsing himself, but due to not being able to live with what had happened. Choosing the lobotomy would make him forget about everything and help him live out the rest of his life in peace.

1 comment:

  1. I also watched the movie "Shutter Island" and yes I agree this movie had many psychological issues.I went to watch this movie the opening weekend and didn't expect the movie to have the plot that it had. They showed the trailer of this movie for almost a year and I expected to be a action movie due to him being kept asylum. The movie turned out to be different because apparently like you said he created his own fantasy world and went completely insane due to his wife killing his kids. I agree with you this movie was very good thriller movie but I still need to watch "Inception" which I heard is another good movie.

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