Shutter Island's law of 4 has to do with the anagram names Andrew invents for his fantasy world. "Edward (Teddy) Daniels" is an anagram of "Andrew Laeddis" and "Rachel Solando" is an anagram of "Dolores Chanal," the maiden name of Andrew's dead wife. This created four different names within Andrew's fantasy.
The only clue is a note, which reads: "The law of 4; I am 47; They are 80; + you are 3; But who is 67?". Daniels believes that the note is a code that points to a 67th patient, when there are only 66.
The “rule of four” is the Supreme Court's practice of granting a petition for review only if there are at least four votes to do so. The rule is an unwritten internal one; it is not dictated by any law or the Constitution.
Was Andrew faking it at the end of Shutter Island?
In the end of "Shutter Island," it's revealed that the main character, Teddy Daniels, is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at the mental institution. He has been experiencing delusions and hallucinations, which were orchestrated by the staff to help him come to terms with the truth of his past.
The law of 4 harks back to the anagrams of Edward Daniels and Rachel Solando (there are four scrambled names) while 67 refers to Teddy/Andrew himself, who is the 67th patient in Ward C. The cryptic note was meant to trigger Teddy to remember he was Andrew.
It turns out that Andrew is actually an inmate at Ashecliffe, and that the film's events up until this point — Cawley's allowing Andrew to play the role of Teddy — were designed to cure his insanity that stemmed from murdering his depressed wife after she drowned their children at their lake house.
Andrew's last line of dialogue, and his failure to respond to being called Teddy, has led many fans to speculate that Andrew had not actually regressed, and was voluntarily submitting himself to a lobotomy so he did not have to live with his sins and the monster he had become.
However, in a radical twist, we find that Teddy is himself a patient at the asylum. He suffers from Delusional Disorder, creating a false world to escape the dark reality of his past. Shutter Island is one of the many films that present the ethical considerations of psychological treatment to a mainstream audience.
He finds out that he was never Teddy, the US Marshal, but Andrew Laeddis, who murdered his own wife after she drowned their three children. His partner Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo, turns out to be a doctor who was watching over him and is actually named Lester Sheehan.
What Mental Illness Did Teddy Daniels have in Shutter Island?
The psychiatrist debriefs Teddy about his Delusional Disorder. The psychiatrist tells Teddy that he has been a patient for over two years. He explains to Teddy that he created fictional characters by using anagrams from his name, and the names of his loved ones.
There is no Rachel Solando. There is no Chuck, at least as we see him. It's all a trick on the person we know as Teddy for the entirety of the story, right up until the end. Teddy, not the arsonist of his fantasy, was the one who killed his wife after she had drowned their three children.
Is the movie Shutter Island based on a true story?
Inspired by the history of the Boston Harbor Islands, Bostonian Dennis Lehane published his book Shutter Island in 2003. In this thriller, Lehane created a fictitious hospital island with nefarious happenings.
Parents need to know that Shutter Island is a very intense thriller, with some highly disturbing imagery, including drowned children, Nazi concentration camps, piles of corpses, blood, guns, dark prison corridors, and bizarre, scary nightmares and hallucinations.
To keep quiet for the sake of all those he could still save if the results of the roleplay are a success. "Shhh. Keep quiet. You can't run from what you've done, but that's okay."
Only Teddy is not a real person but a delusion created by inmate Andrew Laeddis. The ending of “Shutter Island” reveals that DiCaprio's character is a patient himself, committed to the Shutter Island facility after murdering his wife (Michelle Williams) because she went insane and killed their children.
Did he get a lobotomy at the end of Shutter Island?
However, his guilt and pain are still so heavy that he knows he cannot live with them; rather than live with the knowledge of his pain, he chooses to pretend that he is still Teddy Daniels and let them lobotomize him, so that he can finally be free of his burden.
Why does Leonardo DiCaprio have a bandaid in Shutter Island?
It is unclear why he wears the band-aid, but it stays with him until nearly the end of the film. He only gets rid of it while taking a shower after John Cawley informs him that he actually showed up on the island alone.
Today lobotomy is rarely performed; however, shock therapy and psychosurgery (the surgical removal of specific regions of the brain) occasionally are used to treat patients whose symptoms have resisted all other treatments.
Dolores was bipolar, and she killed her children during a moment of mental crisis. Dolores had been living with bipolar for quite a while in Shutter Island, and it turns out that Andrew refused to seek help for his wife, instead deciding to ignore her struggles even when she burned down their apartment.
Teddy fails to realize that the patient he eventually finds in Ward C, George Noyce, has severe scars that Teddy himself inflicted after Noyce referred to him as "Laeddis." Like Solando's interview, Noyce's warning that Teddy's investigation is fake also fails to have the intended effect, but does make Teddy grow ...
Edward is saying he would rather be lobotomized, which he is comparing to the death of his old self, than accept that he is really Edward and live his whole life knowing that he is a murderer. RELATED: How & Why The Shutter Island Movie Changed The Book's Ending.
It coveys that Andrew Laeddis was the 67th patient residing in Ward C of Ashecliffe Hospital, and no matter how much he tries to escape into a reality that rests on "THE LAW OF 4," he cannot break free from the fact that he is the 67th patient, Andrew Laeddis, who killed his wife.
Finally, the old woman writes 'run' on Teddy's notebook, not because Ashecliffe is running experiments on its patients, but because she knows that this is Teddy's last opportunity to escape the mental hospital.
