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Readers Comments (18)

1. Wesword says:

   June 10, 2010 at 8:04 am

   The Ending? Well first of all I do not like these kind of endings. I paid good money to see this movie and I feel for the price of six bucks I deserve a clear and understandable conclusion.

   Rather a movie has a good, bad, sad or happy ending I feel is the soul responsibility of the author or the director, not mine.

   The bottom line; all stories written in the past tense should have an ending. The screenplay of this movie was entirely set in the 1950′s so I’m sure Ted’s life must have ended by now even if by natural causes.

   I took a chance and paid for a beginning, a climax, and an ending…but like a lot of stuff these days…I got taken.

   Give me my moneies worth and please tell me what the author meant by “the ending of this movie is based on “die a good man than live as a monster”.

   Thanks,
   Wesley
2. Boo hoo Wesword! says:

   June 11, 2010 at 1:27 pm

   I guess some peopole must be paid to think for a minute to figure out what has actually happen at the end.

   An advise to people such as Wesword, next time buy yourself a ticket for a chick flick movie or a cartoon, you will get a clear ending for sure (and most likely a happy one!)
3. lol says:

   June 11, 2010 at 2:33 pm

   die a good man than live as a monster … he didn’t slip back… he pretended he did so he didn’t have to live knowing he killed his wife anymore
4. Adam says:

   June 11, 2010 at 4:20 pm

   I actually rather enjoyed the ending, I think that Ted made a conscious choice to accept the fantasy world rather than the truth of his “monster” knowing full well that they were going to rip out a part of his brain to control him. It’s almost like a reverse ending to Huxley’s a brave new world. Rather than accept the fact that he had a murderous past, he knowingly chooses to become a part of the status quo in the mental hospital. He is choosing the terms of his own legacy in his mind which is quite powerful in my opinion. Overall I think it was well shot, well written, and well acted. I will be buying it on Blu-Ray
5. Phoebe Polhamus says:

   June 13, 2010 at 8:02 am

   Thanks for the blog post. I really enjoyed the read.
6. Becky says:

   June 13, 2010 at 5:14 pm

   well first consider yourself lucky that six dollars is all it costs to see a movie by you and the problem isnt in directing or the screenplay of this movie, there isnt supposed to be a clear ending. I read the book as well because I thought there might be a clearer explanation to what occured but if anything reading the book just made me question what I had already decided must have been the true conclusion.
7. jake says:

   June 13, 2010 at 5:45 pm

   I think that the end meant that leo is teddy, but he knows to much, and to keep it a secret, they create false memories for him and want him to be one of the (spies) that they create at the lighthouse. They need teddy for many reasons, not all clearcut but there. Teddy is sane and he is preparing to escape with chuck, chuck was near they lighthouse when captured, and could easily have been preformed on and made to think he is the doctor.
8. BreAnn says:

   June 13, 2010 at 6:49 pm

   Maybe there were 2 different endings to choose from. One ending is the obvious one they wanted you to believe is true, where everything they told DiCaprio about him being a patient, which did seem right because he did remember what really happened to his wife and children. So when he said, “he would rather die a good man than live as a monster,” he reverted back to being the agent again (the good man) instead of the monster (the killer).

   The other ending was that maybe everything they told him was a lie and the entire movie was what it seemed to be and he was a federal marshall. Suppose that the lady (psychiatrist) in the cave was real and everything she told him was the truth. So at the end when he said, rather die a good man than live as a monster, he was telling Chuck (his so-called partner) that Chuck was the monster (because he was in on the conspiracy) and would die as a monster, but he (DiCaprio) would die as the good man who he knew he really was, and not the patient (or the monster they were trying to convince him he was) because he knew they were going to kill him. Just an analysis or a thought.
9. Sam says:

   June 13, 2010 at 7:27 pm

   Actually, in response to Wesword, these are the exact kind of movies that “six dollars” should pay for. A captivating story line all but excludes the idea of spelling out a movie, which is seen on every blockbuster shelf now. Where has the sense of adventure and mystery gone? Spelling out the ending condescends us; six dollars is too much to spend on such a giveaway.

   And as for spelling the ending out, “die a good man than live as a monster” derives from the chains that keep hostage mystery and fate. The point is not to have an exact explanation, but rather venture into the depths of one’s own theory. A final ending to a twisted tale is not only unfair to its viewers, but isn’t even worth “six dollars”.
10. Lila says:

    June 13, 2010 at 11:15 pm

    I didn’t understand how it ended. Was he actually insane and a patient in the institution, or was he simply being tricked by the doctors? I am SO confused.
11. Kevin Bradshaw says:

    June 13, 2010 at 11:46 pm

    I rather appreciated the ending.
    It was interesting that the director(Martin Scorcese)steps outside of the characters mind to tell the story,
    and at the same time let us understand what was the memories of a U.S. Marshal whom had lost his facalties while investigating a crime.
12. Charlotte says:

    June 13, 2010 at 11:58 pm

    Anyone who needs a concrete ending to enjoy a movie or book shouldn’t watch Shutter Island and shouldn’t be scouring the interent, thinking the answer is out there. I watched the movie with my best friend and debated it for hours after with her, trying to find the “real” ending. I went to the library the next day, checked out the book, and read it all in one sitting, scrutinizing the pages word by word, looking for one slip up or one loose end to point me towards whether or not this character was a mental patient or tricked into believing so. The ending conclusion? There isn’t one. There are no slip ups, there are no loose ends, there is no answer. Everything ties together perfectly and every little detail can be argued for one side or the other. You can do what I did and strain your brain for hours trying to figure out the impossible, or you can sit back and accept that the point of this story is not for you to figure out what the truth is. There is no truth, and that’s the point. The book is about the questioning of one’s sanity and it, in turn, leads us to question our own sanity. You doubt everything, question every facet of the story, and THAT was the author’s primary motive. So sit back and enjoy Shutter Island for what it truly is: a job well done.
13. Michael says:

    June 14, 2010 at 6:05 am

    The idea behind dying as a good man than living as a monster means that Andrew knows what he did and is back to reality but he cannot live with the fact that he killed his wife even after she did what she did to their children so Andrew would rather have the lobotomy than live with the fact that he murdered his wife… hope this helps
14. peter says:

    June 14, 2010 at 10:32 am

    DiCaprio’s character pretends to have relapsed in the final scene of the movie because he wants the lobotomy. he’d rather have his memories removed than live on with the guilt and horror of his past.

    it’s better to die a good man than to live as a monster, and he knows that he’s a monster. he’s choosing to have the monster removed via lobotomy.
15. Deborah Schmitt says:

    June 14, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    I agree that the ending was a let down. But was it really…the ambiguity has forced to watch this 3 times b/c every time I watch I learn a little more about the very skilled nuances and sub stories of this complicated plot. Very well done movie, Mr. Scorcese (right up there with the classic like Hitchcock). However, I think the key is Teddy having such “good defense mechanisms.” Struggle between the bad guys wanting to erase his memory (labotomy) and the good guys (his partner and Mr. Kingsley) wanting him to know who he was and what he did. But who really are the good guys and the bad guys? In the end, I believe the good guys succeeded (because they brought him back to reality) but just as Andrew initially created Teddy to forget who he was, in the last scene, when Teddy said that about living as a monster or dying a good man, I think Teddy had achieved reality (which he did not want) but went forward “voluntarily” with the labotomy because he wanted to forget, and that was the only way. I believe the statement in the last scene about “being too smart” was true and that is why the partner called after him. I think he realized that Andrew was pretending to be Teddy b/c if he did so, they would decide to labotomize him, and in the end he wanted to “die a good man” and without the torture of knowing what he did. Andrew got what he wanted in the end.
16. A says:

    June 29, 2010 at 4:23 am

    I don’t understand. I thought the labotomy thing where they alter people’s brains or whatever in the lighthouse was supposed to be a “conspiracy” that he invented as part of his insanity and denial… So if the labotomy thing is true wouldn’t that mean he isn’t insane and that essentially their mind games did get to him?
17. Kat says:

    June 29, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    In this movie you see at the beginning Teddy was in the war, and he recaps on his experience when he shot dead the Nazi soldiers who were unarmed. He says himself this was like murder. This was a war crime in the eyes of the government, so the US government goes on to make each one of these US officers ‘disappear’ on Shutter Island so they can never reveal the secrets of what happened in the war. This is so the war crimes committed by Teddy and his friends (eg he met one of his war friends in the high security ward) are never revealed. So they were all lying to him. He was brain washed into thinking he killed his children etc. The escaped woman he met in the cave was real too.
18. Steven says:

    July 5, 2010 at 6:13 am

    Very good film, i do agree with the comments regarding interpretation of the ending in two ways.
    However im swayed more to the cover up ending, when teddy talks with Rachel in the caves she mentions the drugs they will try to give him.
    Remeber the start when his cigarettes go missing and takes one from chuck or the aspirin from the doctor for his headache?
    Maybe chuck was placed as his partner for a reason.
    Just a thought.