A Shutter Island Surprise

     In class this week we watched the movie Shutter Island after reading the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The ending to this movie was mind blowing. I never suspected Ted Daniels (DiCaprio) to actually be Andrew Ladis! However, looking back at the end of the movie, this made a lot more sense. It explained why he kept having visions of the girl asking why he didn't save her. It also explained that his hallucinations did not result from being drugged, but actually his withdrawal from his medications. Also, this explains his fear of water at the beginning of the movie,when he's on the ferry. Obviously the water reminded him of his wife and his childrens' murders, something he couldn't face.
      However, the most interesting part of the movie for me was the very end, when Ladis is sitting on the steps of the ward, talking to Dr. Sheehan. At first, when he brought up how him and "his partner" needed to get of "this rock and back to the mainland" because there was some crazy things happening on the island, I immediately thought he had regressed again, and forgotten who he really was. However, when he says to Dr. Sheehan that he had always wondered which "was worse: living as a monster or dying a good man," I realized he had not. I think that he simply chose to be lobotomized because he could live with the memories of the many deaths he had cause, and the guilt of killing his family. I don't know if we talked about this in class today, because I wasn't there, but to me it seemed like the more likely outcome. The fact that he knowingly walked away with the nurses and the doctor to get lobotomized also shows how he accepted his fate.
       Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It always kept me on my toes about what was going to happen, and at the end of the movie I felt extreme sympathy for Ladis, and in return, the mentally insane.