The film is shot in the angle of Laeddis, the declared madman. In that case, it is not difficult to discover those deliberately-made unnatural and contradictory scenes. Or better, the entire movie is more like a "fantasy" than the real world. For instance, when Laeddis interrogates Ms. Kearns, a patient, many delicate details straightforwardly illustrate that scene is his delusion. The glass cup is filled of water again after Ms. Kearns drinks it up. The number of cigarette ends in the ashtray changes. And Ms. Kearns on the sly writes the message, "RUN" in the left of his notebook, but later turns out to be on the right. These frequent and disordered scene shifts between memory, illusion and reality showcase the chaotic and unstable mind of a mental patient. Undeniably, Laeddis is insane, but many places in the movie are trying to inspire us to think twice of this problem: who is actually insane, Laeddis who has a strong desire for justice or the so called "normal people" who are indifferent with the violence in the world?.
As Dr. Cawley said, "We treat them, try to heal, try to cure. And if that fails, we at least will provide them with a measure of comfort in their lives. Calm." Shutter Island might be the wonderland for those psychiatric patients, a paradise in which they can make up their own world as they wish: no violence, no death, no sin. Even if where they live is as crude as a cell in prison, the door guarded and the only window barred, they do not want to get out. The unwillingness of leaving the island is reiterated in the film at least three times. One occurs during the conversation between Mrs. Kearns and Laeddis. Mrs. Kearns elaborates bluntly, "I don't know the world anymore. They say there are bombs that can reduce whole cities to ash. And what they call television, voices and faces coming from a box. I hear enough voices already." In the second time, a patient in ward C who attacks Laeddis also mentions the same thing, "I do not want to leaveWe heard things about the outside world, about hydrogen bomb test.
