20 Things You Somehow Missed In Shutter Island
17. Teddy Doesn't Strike Matches In The Movie's First Half
Keep an eye on Teddy's smoking habits throughout the movie, and you might notice something curious.
In the first half of the film, Teddy never once strikes a match, instead relying on Chuck to do the honours or, in one nightmarish sequence, the man he believes to be arsonist Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas).
On one hand, you can argue that this is simply a safety precaution on the part of Dr. Sheehan, to not give a mentally ill person a pack of matches, but it more likely relates to Teddy's traumatic association with fire after his wife was allegedly killed in a fire set by Laeddis.
Yet at almost exactly the film's mid-way point, as the treatment begins to take hold and Teddy slowly becomes Andrew again, he starts striking matches while skulking around Shutter Island, free of quite the same horrifying relationship with fire.