"you'll never leave this island."
i saw shutter island yesterday! i loved it.
one of the things i loved the most about the movie was that i thought (as did scott, and also my mom who saw it separately) that it was deliberately left ambiguous as to whether teddy or andrew was the true reality. while on the one hand, you can say that andrew was real, the experiment was real, and andrew chose in the end to be lobotomized rather than face reality, i think an argument can also be made that teddy was real and they played their mind games on him and set him up but that in the end, he chose to go to his death (or lobotomy, at any case) rather than to play along and remain there as their prisoner (sort of like what happened with rachel - the "real" rachel, who he met in the cave; if you assume that teddy was real, she was also real and her story of being a doctor who was then committed holds true).
ANYWAY! my point is that scott and i were having a great time discussing the brilliance of the ambiguity, and then i came home and did a little poking around on the internet and so far haven't seen anyone who didn't accept that andrew was real and that teddy was a creation of his own mind.
so! if you saw it, did you think it was conclusive what the true reality was? are scott and i (and my mom, apparently) just crazy? if it wasn't meant to ambiguous, i'm kind of sad, as that was probably my favorite thing about the movie. i mean, whatever, i'll keep believing it could go either way because ultimately i think it's a lot more interesting, but it'd be nice to think that was the intent.
one of the things i loved the most about the movie was that i thought (as did scott, and also my mom who saw it separately) that it was deliberately left ambiguous as to whether teddy or andrew was the true reality. while on the one hand, you can say that andrew was real, the experiment was real, and andrew chose in the end to be lobotomized rather than face reality, i think an argument can also be made that teddy was real and they played their mind games on him and set him up but that in the end, he chose to go to his death (or lobotomy, at any case) rather than to play along and remain there as their prisoner (sort of like what happened with rachel - the "real" rachel, who he met in the cave; if you assume that teddy was real, she was also real and her story of being a doctor who was then committed holds true).
ANYWAY! my point is that scott and i were having a great time discussing the brilliance of the ambiguity, and then i came home and did a little poking around on the internet and so far haven't seen anyone who didn't accept that andrew was real and that teddy was a creation of his own mind.
so! if you saw it, did you think it was conclusive what the true reality was? are scott and i (and my mom, apparently) just crazy? if it wasn't meant to ambiguous, i'm kind of sad, as that was probably my favorite thing about the movie. i mean, whatever, i'll keep believing it could go either way because ultimately i think it's a lot more interesting, but it'd be nice to think that was the intent.