Revealing mistake: When Leo is laying his dead kids on the grass, the little girl keeps moving her eyes and breathing.
Continuity mistake: When Teddy's kids are lying dead on the grass, the position of the girl's arms keeps changing between shots.
Other mistake: During the flashback of the soldiers executing the Dachau guards, the soldiers are in a line opposite the guards who are in a line against a fence. The soldiers all start shooting at the same time, but we are shown the guards being mown down by gunfire in succession, like dominoes, rather than simultaneously.
Trivia: When Teddy enters the lighthouse, as soon as he begins to climb the spiral stairs, the camera follows his movement from in front of him. However, as Teddy and the camera wind around the stairs, the wall behind also appears to move with them, as though what is REALLY moving is only the staircase itself, rotating on its central axis. Yet another point (added to the various disappearing glasses/bottles) that adds to the general 'insane' feel of the film.
Trivia: During the ferry approach at the start, we are shown Shutter Island. In actuality this is a combination of Peddocks Island (the decaying brick buildings), Maine's Acadia National Park, Massachusetts' Medfield State Hospital, and Turner Hill Country Club's Rice Estate (located in Ipswich, MA), which were combined via CGI. Additionally, the mountainous region of the island (shown as the ferry approaches) was also CGI, and added in post-production.
Trivia: The scene where all the soldiers are shot along the fence is historically accurate, though there is debate on the exact numbers.
Teddy Daniels: Baby, I love this because you gave it to me, but it is one fuckin' ugly tie.
George Noyce: Don't you get it? You're a rat in a maze.
Dr. John Cawley: We don't know how she got out of her room. It's as if she evaporated, straight through the walls.
Question: The children in Teddy's hallucinations were bloody but they died by drowning. Is this just an inference to Andrew's guilt that his children's "blood is on his hands" because he didn't seek treatment for Dolores' mental illness? Or is it Scorsese being overly dramatic and adding a lot of blood where it doesn't belong? Also, how exactly did Andrew kill Dolores? Did he use his service revolver, even though we don't hear the shot?
Question: The woman that writes "run" on Teddy's note pad, was Ben Kingsly trusting this "crazy woman" not to tell Teddy or even let it slip that the whole thing was set up for him? Same question goes for every other crazy person in the institute that Teddy speaks to.
Answer: Teddy belonged in Ward C. He would have never met any of the patients.
Chosen answer: The other patients were not let in on the arrangements. They would have had no reason to suspect that anything at all had been set up for Teddy. As far as they're concerned, if they're cognizant enough to be concerned at all, Teddy's just another crazy guy acting as crazy as all the rest of them.
Answer: I think Mrs Kearns is in on it. We see her get a little flustered when she is asked about the doctor, who we find out later is sitting right there. Also, she gets uncomfortable when Teddy brings up Andrew Laeddis. She even tries to warn Teddy. I just discovered this recently when watching with the subtitles, but when Teddy comes back from the cave, Mrs Kearns can be heard saying "I can't remember what I'm supposed to remember", likely referring to the script she was supposed to stick to.
Question: Why does Teddy have a cut with a plaster (band-aid) on his forehead throughout the film?
Answer: The bandage is a symbol indicating when and when not Teddy is caught in his delusions. When the bandage is on he is delusional, thinking he is the marshal finding out all the dark secrets of the facility. When the bandage is absent he is lucid and aware of his past crimes and his own delusions.
Wrong. It's on the whole movie until he takes a shower. The bandaid is off but yet that's the scene where he runs in the lighthouse thinking he's the Marshall still. Did you watch the movie at all?
Answer: He was in an altercation with the patient in ward C prior to returning to ward C and talking with him again. It was an injury sustained in the past due to that.
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Chosen answer: I think the recurring blood comes from the blood of his wife when he killed her. there was a lot of blood you see, in his psychosis that means a lot and has taken over a large part of his hallucinations, just like Dachau camp. Yes, he did shoot his wife Dolores, in the belly. You can see it in the end of the movie.
lionhead