Was it Leonardo DiCaprio's character, his wife and/or Ben Kingsley and his team of immoral medical experimenting staff etc or even someone else?
Cheers.
P.S. Even though he was guilty and convicted (watch the movie to find out why, let's avoid SPOILERS), would you say Leo's character is in any way "bad" at all? Or just guilty and very flawed due to circumstances, cheers.
You could say his wife was a villain. But again she was not normal. And Teddy seemed like a good man who got broken down.
shareThe film went to literally quite a LOT OF LENGTH to say that even though what the wife did was no doubt wrong, killing her afterwards was not right either. And we see Leo's character not only feel guilty about this but suffer consequences. Its like it wanted to take its "two wrongs don't make a right" statement to its ultimate outer limits. Or...
shareBen Kingsley (Dr. Cawley).
At the end, inside the lighthouse, Dr. Cawley brainwashed the vulnerable Teddy (who was at the peak of drug action) that he is not Teddy and someone else. He exploited the fact of anagram of the names of Teddy and his wife's killer (maybe he intentionally mis-spelled the words too!). Apart from that, Dr. Cawley didn't have any proof such as court orders, photograph of Teddy's dead wife, Mugshot of Teddy, Teddy's original Cop ID with his supposed original name, Newspaper clippings etc. Nothing.
During those days, there were such secret operations such as MK Ultra and Operation Paperclip which hired doctors to learn possibility of brainwashing people and which can be used during war.
But Dr. Cawley's experiment failed. At the movie's very end, Teddy started to come back to reality but knew he cannot escape the island. To discredit the Doctors, Teddy remarked 'This island makes me wonder, which is worse, to live like a monster or to die as a good man?' and opts for lobotomy. Here, he clearly refers the Doctors as Monsters - the Antagonists.
Cheers!!