Carrying over spoiler heavy Shutter Island discussion from another thread....

CP3S said:

doubleofive said:

xhonzi said:

I think the movie and the book were both written to be intentionally ambiguous. While I lean to your interpretation, I think the movie supports your cousin's as a valid interpretation as well.
What? I don't see how it could support anything but the explanation the movie itself gave. Vanilla Sky was like that, no one understood it, even though they spend the last 10 minutes of the movie explaining what was going on.

I agree. The movie spelled out the explanation quite clearly and definitively, I don't think there was the least bit of ambiguity about it.

I gotta agree with 3PS and 005 here. {SPOILERS} There are two exposition dumps in the movie that show the two possibilities of interpretation: the one at the end in the lighthouse, and the one in the cave with the crazy lady. The one at the lighthouse has the lengthy flashback in which his wife kills the kids and then he kills her. To me, this is finally showing the reality of the situation, otherwise they would just leave it ambiguous, as they did with the cave scene.

CP3S said:

I loved that movie while watching it, thought it was shaping up to be a great little mystery thriller, especially when he met the woman in the cave. It was getting really exciting with all the conspiracy stuff. Then all the twists kicked in... and I was pretty disappointed. Feels like everything goes for the "WHAT A TWIST!!!" shock reaction these days. Comes off as a lame gimmick to me. Tired of it. Very disappointed by Shutter Island in the end, felt it could have been so much more.

I thought the same thing upon seeing it the first time, but the movie really stands up to multiple viewings. Once you know what is actually going on you can pay more attention to the subtleties of the characters and the mystery, and to Scorsese's great directing.