shutter island movie

The protagonist Teddy Daniels is trapped in a delusion for nearly the entire film, only able to acknowledge the reality of his past for mere moments before regressing back into his delusional world. Teddy's line at the end of the film—"Is it better to live as a monster or die as a good man?"—suggests that death might be preferable to the kind of "mad" existence that Teddy inhabits after the traumatic events he has endured. Teddy's madness is linked not only to the circumstances of his family's deaths, but also to his military service in World War II, during which he witnessed the horrors of Nazi death camps. Scorsese implicates the viewer in Teddy's madness by grounding the film's perspective almost entirely within his delusional mind.