Shutter Island : How did he get off the island in the first place?

How did he get off the island in the first place?

This is a plot hole.

When we first meet Teddy he is on the boat on the way to the island with his partner.
How can he forget he was a patient there for two years and how did they give him a boat ride off the island to then return?
It's like as if they fooled him into getting on the boat to leave, "You are being released," then gave him amnesia and turned it around or something.

"Please vote to preserve the unique character of Warren…" - Robert Duvall

Re: How did he get off the island in the first place?

We don’t see what happens before Teddy is on the boat. For all we know he could have been kept on the boat for days and doped up so he didn’t even know where he was. Since it was all an elaborate role play designed to feed into his grandiose delusional disorder and psychosis, he would have no trouble concocting up a fantasy in his head and believing he had always been a US Marshal living in on the mainland.

Re: How did he get off the island in the first place?

Other than that plot hole it is a good movie with a great twist ending.

He knew who he was but faked it so that he would get the lobotomy to forget what happened with his family.

"Please vote to preserve the unique character of Warren…" - Robert Duvall

Re: How did he get off the island in the first place?

Interesting theory but it doesn't work.

My password is password

Re: How did he get off the island in the first place?

It's definitely up to interpretation, but I think the most-common answer is that the scene never happened. It was all in his head.

I agree with you that the scene doesn't make sense after seeing the whole thing. If he was the most-dangerous person on the island, then they never would have let him get on the boat just to play out his fantasies (or to fool him), and especially without constraining him.

So then the follow-up question becomes… If that scene didn't happen, then what other scenes didn't happen?

And I don't think even Martin Scorsese has an answer to that one. The whole movie is one bizarre scene after another, so it's easy to conclude that it all takes place in his head up to the lighthouse-scene, but that scene is pretty messed up too, so I don't know if we can say for sure that even happened.
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