Movie Trailer: The Visit (2015)

The Shyamalan Series: After Earth (2013)

When I was a young boy, I received for Christmas one year a book with the (now politically-incorrect…) title Adventures for Boys. 

After avidly reading the selections within that anthology, I devoured other, similar stories of outdoor adventure such as Jack London’s (1876 – 1916) The Call of the Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906). 

Those tales featured genuine simplicity -- or clarity -- of theme and morality, and to this day, I find that writing voice and style appealing.

Almost universally set in a harsh climate or natural terrain, these “adventures for boys” also concerned,  specifically, a character’s rite of passage, even if the character in question happens to be a canine.

M. Night Shyamalan’s much-maligned science fiction movie After Earth (2013) is an affair in an almost identical vein. It’s a boy-against nature, rite-of-passage movie, and one uncluttered by story fat or extraneous plotting and incident.

In fact, After Earth is a stream-lined, enjoyable adventure for boys and girls.  And likes its literary antecedents, the film even focuses on a very specific philosophy of life, and explores that (spiritual) way of knowing with a surfeit of clarity, even grace.  

And I'm not talking about Scientology, either.

In short, the film is more enjoyable, and worthwhile than I anticipated it would be, and much more so than most reviews have indicated.

After Earth is set in the distant future. Man has left Earth behind after polluting and ruining it.  

One thousand years after that exodus and re-settlement on another world, Nova Prime, man has established himself as an interstellar presence. 

Unfortunately, a competing alien race has bred monstrous predators called the Ursa who can smell our fear, and who are engineered to do nothing but hunt and murder humans.

On a routine space mission aboard a ship called the Hesper, a hero father, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) and his estranged, troubled teenage son, Kitai Rage (Jaden Smith) face danger when their ranger ship encounters an “asteroid storm.” 

The ship crashes on wild, untamed Earth, after cracking into pieces.  Alas, a rescue beacon is located on the tail section of the ship…located more than fifty miles away from the fore section’s crash site.

Side-lined by a severe leg injury, Cypher must send his inexperienced son into the wild alone to retrieve the rescue beacon and send a distress call to the authorities. 

Making matters more dangerous, the Hesper was carrying in its hold a deadly Ursa captive, a creature now unloosed on Earth and ready to resume hunting human survivors.

Cypher has mastered the art of “ghosting,” of suppressing his fear so that the Ursa can’t detect his presence.  But his son, Kitai, has no such experience…

In my introduction above, I wrote about After Earth’s central, fully-explored theme or philosophy. 

That philosophy of life -- short and sweet -- is mindfulness: the attentive awareness of the reality of things; of the happenings of the moment.  It’s a Buddhist belief, but also one that has been adopted in contemporary psychological counseling.

Mindfulness is considered one way of understanding life, and of vanquishing emotions that aren’t important, or serve no useful purpose.  And in After Earth, mindfulness is the gateway to adulthood and the key to survival in a frightening situation.  And we have seen in the Shyamalan series how purpose, and understanding of purpose -- clarity of one's destiny -- is a crucial leitmotif.

Specifically, Cypher delivers a lengthy monologue about the nature of fear in the film, and how, via the auspices of mindfulness, he was able to subtract fear from his mental gestalt.  Cypher describes danger as “real” but fear as nothing but a choice, an emotion that is “imaginary.”  

Hence, it can be controlled.

Cypher’s key to short-circuiting the un-real aspect of fear, as he describes it, is his recognition of his immediate, surrounding environment.  He describes a terrifying battle with an Ursa, and how fear left his body.  His eyes registered sunlight.  He describes the sight of his own blood.   But Cypher distanced himself from his emotions even as he tuned into his environment, so he could survive. In a crisis, Cypher suggests, we must deal with what surrounds us, instead of imaginary boogeymen that are unreal, and therefore unrelated to the life-and-death struggle at hand.

Mindfulness is the philosophy that guides and informs After Earth, but the mode of that philosophy’s transmission is of equal interest to the message itself.  This is a film about generations, and about fathers-and-sons, specifically.

Indeed, one might gaze upon the film in its entirety as a metaphor for fathering (or on a bigger scale, parenting in general).  Here a father must share with his child the way he sees the world, and then hope that this very knowledge will be useful when that boy must stand up and fight alone.  

Without being maudlin about it, the movie is about the wisdom we impart to our children. Other Shyamalan films have been, more or less, about the same idea.  Think of Morgan and Bo in Signs (2002), or Joseph in Unbreakable (2000).  Do we pass on our perceptual sets, or do we show them how to see the world in their own way?

And, of course, in this case, it’s absolute murder to see the boy stand up and fight alone, when it’s clear that Cypher wants nothing more than to fight Kitai’s battles for him. 

That’s an urge all parents feel and yet, in some important instances, must resist.  We send our children out into the world knowing that we can’t always be there for them, but that, hopefully, the things we taught them will resonate and prove meaningful. Those seeds will sprout in their memories, and they will survive and endure, and then -- one day -- pass on their version of that knowledge to the next generation.

The father-son relationship in After Earth is emotionally-moving because even a helpful philosophy such as mindfulness can be perceived, in certain situations, as negative.  

From the outside, it looks a lot like distance, or the lack of feeling...the lack of love. 

As Kitai's mother suggests, he is a sensitive, intuitive, feeling boy, one who needs a father, not a philosopher or commander.  He doesn't understand why his father is so remote.  There is a price to pay for mindfulness, for always living life in the "ghosting" mode, in the film's vernacular.

In terms of family issues, Cypher and Kitai both experienced a tragedy involving a family member, and Cypher doesn’t know how to handle his guilt.  So he deploys mindfulness in his family life too, but there is a cost to those around him.   It is not difficult or inappropriate to see Cypher as a character like the Reverend Graham Hess in Signs, someone who has suffered a tragedy and changed, withdrawing, essentially, from his children.

Cypher -- adhering to the stoicism of mindfulness -- can’t reach out emotionally, because he believes emotions don’t help in a crisis.  Cypher has been practicing mindfulness in his personal life for so long that he forgets what it means to really connect with someone. In other words, the very philosophy that keeps him alive is the thing that keeps him from truly connecting with his son.

Accordingly, After Earth reaches its zenith of emotion during its climax, when Cypher attempts to express his new-found regard and respect for Kitai in a kind of socially-acceptable but ordered and restrained gesture: a military salute.

Delightfully -- and outside of movie tradition -- Kitai doesn’t reciprocate.  

Instead, he hugs his father, an absolute assertion that sometimes emotionality, not mindfulness, is the key to life.   

Thus, like all children, Kitai has taken his father’s “lesson” and interpreted it in a way that is meaningful to him as an individual.  

That is the very rite-of-passage meted in the film: Kitai’s ability to understand his father’s choice, and then to make his own meaningful choice about whom he hopes to be.

The movie is about nothing more and nothing less than that kernel of an idea: one man’s way of seeing the world and his son coming to understand that “vision..." and divine his own belief system from it.

Sadly, you likely won’t read about any of this thematic substance in the majority of mainstream critical reviews.  Instead, the reviews for After Earth have been harsh, even savage.

That rampant negativity is a result, I suspect, of a perfect storm of bile and jealousy: the continuing backlash against Shyamalan (because he dared to trick us with The Sixth Sense [1999] and then minted a fortune), and the relatively fresh backlash against Will Smith and his son Jaden.

So if hating is the game, After Earth is a two-fer!

I should also state this fact: After Earth isn't a movie about Scientology.  I've read reviewers insist it's about Scientology because -- wait for it -- there's a volcano placed prominently in the action.  I suppose this means that Revenge of the Sith (a whole planet of volcanoes there!) is also about Scientology.  Who knew?

Perhaps more to the point, even if After Earth did feature principles of Scientology, would that fact immediately, a priori, render it a bad film?  Does the same rule apply to Catholicism or other branches of Christianity, or only to unpopular religions?

But I'm not in the business of defending movies, only watching them, interpreting them, and presenting my analysis.  Having seen and enjoyed the film, I conclude that it is a well-made, enjoyable “adventure for boys” (and girls too…) -- nothing more, nothing less --  with an authentic sense of humanity. It is a simple, straightforward "shipwreck" movie, and parts of the adventure reminded me of Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson.  The production design is original and compelling, and the location shooting transforms Earth into the most vividly dangerous of wildernesses.

We live now in a culture of noisy, hectic movie blockbusters, where event piles upon events, where there are feints and counter-feints, and where “surprises” and reversals come at the audience by the dozen (and often in 3-D to boot).  We leave the theater after such films not exhilarated and moved, but throttled.

Refreshingly, After Earth doesn’t care about throttling you, or layering on a multitude of high-intensity incidents.   Instead -- and much like The Call of the Wild or White Fang -- the film simply and directly vets its adventurous tale of extraordinary survival, and of a father and son discovering each other.

The key is that After Earth accomplishes those tasks with heart, and a considerable degree of humanity.  It's a shame people aren't looking at the movie with open eyes and open hearts, but bitterness instead.  It's more fun, I suppose, to fit the movie into another edition of the "M. Night Shyamalan-has-lost-it" narrative than to grapple with the ideas the movie actually presents.

Frankly, I think the critics could use a lesson in mindfulness.  

So you may love After Earth, or you may hate it, I guess.  But when you watch  the film, at least do this much: drop your expectations and biases, be in the moment, and judge the work for yourself, and on its own merits.

Tomorrow: Our final entry in The Shyamalan Series: The Visit (2015).

Movie Trailer: After Earth (2013)

Movie Trailer: The Happening (2008)

The Shyamalan Series: Lady in the Water (2006)

M. Night Shyamalan’s 2006 movie Lady in the Water (2006) is a cinematic bedtime story, and on that basis, I find that it succeeds quite admirably as a work of art.  The film most decidedly isn’t a fantasy spectacular or epic like Fellowship of the Rings (2001). In terms of comparison it is merely a story that a parent might tell a child on one night, or on many successive nights. 

So you don’t get armies or orcs or elves battling it out here, just a few mer-people and one very big, very bad wolf (called a “scrunt.”)

A modest bedtime story like this -- a tale shared between generations -- conforms to a specific and familiar structure, and indeed, Lady in the Water seems to determinedly ape that structure. In fact, the story is based on an original bedtime story that Shyamalan told his children.

In the first case, the film tells an adventurous story, featuring some fantasy and adventure elements (Story and the world of the Narfs). 

Secondly, bedtime stories and Lady in the Water generally feature a fixed routine of cliffhangers or twists which build upon one another, and just as often deal reverses as victories. 

In this case, that description means that the film hinges largely on the discovery of secret identities.  Characters here must determine who among a small community is a healer, who is a guardian, who is a symbolist, and finally, what people form a group called a “guild.”

In many cases, the discoveries are wrong, dealing the characters grave and dangerous set-backs at the most inopportune of times.

Imagine watching or hearing the story of this film over several days and you start to sense how cleverly Lady in the Water functions as a bedtime story. You believe you have discovered the identity of the healer, so the plot moves forward. Then you discover you were wrong and back you go to rethink your assumptions.  Each twist in this routine is a high point in a story meant to possess peaks and valleys.  Remember Cole Sear’s sentiment in The Sixth Sense that a good bed-time story needs “twists and stuff.” 

Well, that’s exactly how Lady in the Water plays.

And finally, Lady in the Water ends with the final quality of a bedtime story: sheer emotional exhaustion…since “sleep” afterwards is the overall goal of the narrative. 

Accordingly, we are left, at film’s end, a pile of qyucweubf mush, having gone through all the ups and downs with the characters. We are worn out, spent, but satisfied with the nature of the happy ending.  

And that happy ending, of course, is another key element of bedtime stories.

Don’t want the little ones having nightmares, do we?

In terms of our on-going Shyamalan Series, it is clear how, in significant fashion, Lady in the Water reflects the same concerns the director has obsessed upon in his other works.  For example, this film is about a person (in this case, the character played by Shyamalan himself), discovering his purpose. 

However, the tale has been “flipped” in a sense.  Now, the story is also about the catalyst, Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), and her ability to show others (including Mr. Heep), their purpose in this life.  She catalyzes the whole community, essentially, making every person recognize the potential within.

And much like Graham Hess, Malcolm, David or Elijah, Mr. Heep (Paul Giamatti) is burdened with a strange lassitude, a “soul sickness” in the film because he is not doing what he is meant to do.  He has abandoned his destiny as a healer (after the deaths of his wife and child), and is “hiding” at the Cove apartment complex.  Only his interface with the catalyst, Story, enables him to get back on track with his “correct” destiny. She shos him what he is meant to do.

Finally, Lady in the Water represents Shyamalan’s most caustic commentary on the nature of storytelling.  In fact, he features a despicable character in the film, Farber (Bob Balaban) who is clearly supposed to represent a plague upon all storytellers: the critic. 

In the film, Farber is a joyless, loveless, bloodless soul who takes pride in tearing to shreds artists and works of art.  He believes he has seen it all, that there is nothing new under the sun, and that his wisdom is greater than that of the filmmakers he reviews.  Farber is such a stick-in-the-mud he can’t even conceive of an occasion in which two “real” people would actually stand in the rain, facing each other, getting all wet. 

So naturally, Shyamalan makes that set-up, that composition -- two people standing for a long duration in the pounding rain -- the final, valedictory image of his film. 

He thus demonstrates how, in context -- and without a doubt -- that image can make total emotional sense. 

If it is the last time you will ever see a person who has transformed your life, the pounding rain is not an obstacle. Shyamalan thus proves that it is the critics, not the storytellers, who are all wet.

I know and fully understand that Farber is Shyamalan’s revenge against my profession and its practitioners; those who he feels don’t understand his work and worse, actively resist his work. I don’t take the charge personally. I try not to be that kind of critic, but I can tell you this with certainty: there are folks out there who do take a challenge like this quite personally. They don’t see the put-down as playful, they see it as a declaration of war. So in this case, Shyamalan may have started a war that he can’t win, and the savage critical response to the film proves it. Thus, the over-the-top attack on critics in the film might qualify as self-destructive, from a certain viewpoint.

If you look at a sampling of reviews, you see Shyamalan widely referred to as arrogant, vain, and thin-skinned. That may actually be projection on the part of some critics, but the blows landed on Shyamalan and his film nonetheless.

The result? Negative noise has drowned out the simple, heartfelt virtues of this fable, of this bed-time story.

“Man does not listen!”

By night, a mysterious stranger has been swimming at the pool at the apartment complex called The Cover.  The handyman, Mr. Heep (Giamatti) attempts to catch the perpetrator, and encounters a beautiful young woman, named Story (Howard), in the pool.  The further she gets from water, the sicker she becomes.

Story is a "Narf," a sort of mermaid from the "Blue World," come to change the destiny of the human race for the better. She must "see" a writer living in the Cove and influence him to write a book that will change the world. 

But Story is more important even than that.  

She is actually a future leader of her people, a Madame Narf.  Because of this, a monstrous being, a green wolf called a scrunt, is hunting her, attempting to kill her.  This being doesn't want her to return home to lead her people, and prevents Story from hitching a ride with a giant eagle back to the sea.

Mr. Heep learns, however, that several humans -- a healer, a symbologist, a guardian and a guild -- can protect Story and help her accomplish her mission.  At the very least, they must protect her until supernatural judges, the Tartutic, arrive to dispense justice.

“What kind of person would be so arrogant as to presume the intention of another human being?”

I once asked a friend why he did not like Lady of the Water, and his response was that the story felt made up as it went along.  

I actually understand and appreciate that comment, but feel that this structural quality is sort of baked into the movie.  Lady in the Water is a bedtime story, and bedtime stories are, often, made up as they go along. 

Why? Children are eager and curious listeners, and so they call out the storyteller when something doesn’t make sense. (Think of the sick kid with Peter Falk in The Princess Bride [1986]).   

Therefore, as a storyteller you go back, retcon your story, and then adjust, going forward, so that it makes sense to the listener.  

I have to undertake this process with my eight year old son, Joel, all the time during our night-time ritual.  I have to explain exceptions. I have to reveal why something that happened couldn’t happen in the way he now sees it could have, and so forth.  Kids are smart.  They see how threads connect, and they are aware when they don't connect.

As a bedtime storyteller, you have to be nimble; you have to be a quick thinker.

Hence the “fixed routine of cliffhangers” and “setbacks” in bedtime stories. A good storyteller needs not only to throw in “twists and stuff,” per Shyamalan, but also constantly re-adjust the narrative's trajectory towards the conclusion, in the face of questions and speculation.  Or, described anotherway, in light of constant interruptions from smart kids.

This is what the process of communication is, actually. Think of Gamble and Gamble's Model of Communication for a moment, with encoder and decoder working together, adjusting to the feedback of the other.  That's also how a bedtime story works; the sender must adapt to the responses of the receiver, and change approach.  

In the film, we get the wrong symbolist, guild and healer, and then have to do it all again.  In the film, we get the wrong writer (Farber) and then find the right one.  And we miss the first run of the giant eagle to collect Story, and wonder why the Tartutic (the judges) take so long to find and eliminate the Scrunt.  

All these things have to be explained.

Questions? We have a lot of ‘em!

But if the film’s approach is to feel like a bedtime story, to approximate a bedtime story's feints and lunges -- and Lady in the Water was advertised, actually, as a “Classic Bedtime Story for a New Generation” -- we must ask a question.   

Is this a valid and creative way to structure the narrative?  

My answer would be affirmative.  

In fact, this is an inspired way to tell the story. In the Monomyth, we know we’re going to get the hero, the elder, the gatekeeper, the loki-like mischief maker, the call to action, the quest, and the community changed.  A bedtime story -- a different kind of story -- offers a different set of variables or elements, and as I note here, Shyamalan does his best to conform to them.

He's not making a conventional fantasy. He's not making an epic, or a quest film. He's explicitly crafting a bed time story, so there is no better way to go about his tale, is there?

As a consequence or effect of this type of storytelling, we might feel that it is being made up as it goes along, but is that so bad?  

Did it take away from your bedtime stories, as a kid, knowing that your Mom or Dad was making it up as he or she went along, adjusting to your input, devising new schemes, going one way and then another?

Lady in the Water apes that approach but if you study the actual scenes, it’s clear that Shyamalan knows where it is going all along.  My evidence: information presented early recurs later.  For instance, Farber criticizes the movie romance he sees in a theater, noting that it was stupid for having two characters stand in the rain.  And as I noted above, that’s how Lady of the Water ends.  The movie is actually tightly-structured I would argue, it only seems like it is out of control, in part because of the constant addition of new mythology and new terms (such as Narf, Madame Narf, Scrunt, Tartutic, and so on…). 

Like Mr. Heep, we are constantly having to pay attention as the story twists and turns, and some new elements comes into play.

I also understand why people object to Mr. Farber. He’s kind of a straw man character; the vessel for Shyamalan to bottle all his anger and resentment towards critics.  

In the quotation at the beginning of thus section of the review, a character observes that he can’t understand a person who presumes to understand the intentions of another.  

To me, this is much like Shyalaman asserting that no one can look at art and judge for themselves, based on film grammar, observation, or thematic analysis, what a work of art means.  

And I object to that.  I disagree with that vehemently.  

What kind of person presumes to understand the intentions of another human being?

Just about every person you’ve ever met.  

It isn’t just critics who do this.  

But critics are necessary and valuable in the culture I believe, to remind us that there is a difference between “art” and “entertainment.”  The best critics look to art, see how it fits in with the culture, and reveal to audiences how it was assembled, what it means, and how it means what it means.  

That is significant.  Who else but critics discusses art at all these days?  I don’t defend the critics who have dismissed Shyamalan outright, but I also know that critics have their place, and it is an important place.  

And, also, we all go before critics.  I have a new book out.  And critics will take it on.  They’ll either love it or hate. Those who dislike it, or don’t understand it, will make assumptions about me as a person, as a writer and as an artist. That’s just how it is.  

But it is still worth having the discussion. Shymalan can't expect to make films and have critics not attempt to interpret it, analyze it, or even second-guess it.  

The worst thing, in my experience, that can greet a writer is not harsh criticism, but silence.  

I’d rather be raked over the coals -- and this has happened to me more than once -- than have nobody discuss my thoughts; to greet my musings with nothing but deafening silence. Shyamalan's critics have been unfair to him on more than one occason, I believe, but the answer isn't that critics are terrible, inhuman people deserving of death.  

The answer is more nuanced than that.

In conclusion, I belive that Lady in the Water is quite beautiful, and that the bed-time story structure allows us another lens by which to view the typical Shyamalan obsession: a person denied their destiny. "Story" gives Heep a second chance. And Heep, in turn, assures Story's destiny as Madame Narf.  There's a nice symmetry to this bed-time story, and a powerful emotion release, in that rainy denouement.

You can't count tear drops in the pounding rain, can you?

I understand that the critics of the films of M. Night Shyamalan see the beginning of his “fall” from artistic grace in The Village (2004). They see the descent continuing with Lady in the Water (2006).  

I disagree with that time line. 

I believe that Lady in the Water is consistent with his other works in its obsessions involving destiny and storytelling. I don't believe it is a failure if you understand what the film is (and what it actively declared it was): a bed time story.

Now, The Happening plays on a whole different level, perhaps, but I blame that film’s flaws on the poor casting. Mark Wahlberg has many talents, but playing smart isn't one of them.

But that’s a “story” for another day.

Tomorrow, I begin my multi-day celebration of the 40^th anniversary of Space: 1999 (1975-1977).  But next week, starting Wednesday, I will return to the Shyamalan Series with reviews of The Happening (2008), After Earth (2013), and the director’s new film, The Visit (2015).

Movie Trailer: Lady in the Water (2006)

Movie Trailer: The Village (2004)

Movie Trailer: Signs (2002)

The Shyamalan Series: Unbreakable (2000)

In my review of The Sixth Sense (1999) last Friday, I considered the notion that the films of M. Night Shyamalan tend to concern one overriding theme: a person (or persons) cut off from destiny. 

In films such as Signs (2002) the director also pursues that theme; that people lose hope when they aren’t working actively towards their purpose or fate.

In Unbreakable, much as was the case in The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan crafts two main characters who are ensconced on that difficult journey. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) function as mirrors of one another, yet they are joined by their individual searches for purpose. 

Who are they? How do they define themselves?

The latter question involves the idea that we can pinpoint and comprehend our own self-image only in relation to others and society as a whole. David cannot learn who he is, until helped to do so by Price.  In fact, he feels "sadness" everyday when he wakes up because he isn't who he is supposed to be.

“Maybe you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing,” Elijah observes, before setting David on a path towards crime-fighting.

Similarly, Price cannot achieve his somewhat grimmer destiny (as a villain or arch-nemesis) until Dunn realizes and fulfills his role as a superhero or protector. Thus there’s a powerful symbiosis between characters, no doubt. They can’t truly “be” what they are meant to "be" without the presence of the other one; without the influence of one another.

At the same time that Unbreakable explores this theme of characters finding and achieving purpose in life, it follows up on Shyamalan’s other obsessive focus: the nature and importance of storytelling. 

In the case of The Sixth Sense, we were asked to consider story structure, and the manner in which stories must feature “twists and stuff” to keep them interesting for the audience.  

In Unbreakable, we are similarly asked, from the opening title card, to examine the significance -- both socially and culturally -- of comic-books. According to Unbreakable, comic books are not mere entertainment; they are modern hieroglyphs, in a sense, which inform us of crucial information about world.  

This idea is visualized by a scene in the Limited Edition shop wherein Elijah is positioned in front of literal hieroglyphs, ancient comic-books, as it were.

It's not just that superheroes need to be themselves, according to the film, it's that the rest of us need heroes to look up to, or we lose hope.  This is the role that superhero stories fulfill in our culture. Children like Joseph Dunn (Spenceter Treat Clark) need the optimism that only heroes offer; they need the stories that newspapers report on (as in the image above, accompanied by the headline "SAVED").  

What kind of story is that? One in which people are rescued, not lost.  One in which crime doesn't pay, and criminals don't win.

In everyday life, some of us are great heroes; other are great villains, Unbreakable tells us. The comics may exaggerate aspects of human nature, but they are essentially correct in their meditations about these qualities, and canny in understanding our need for them. Thus Unbreakable “deconstructs the cultural reflections the comics make of society, something many other films have tried and failed to do,” according to Douglas Pratt, at the Denver Business Journal (August 17, 2001 page 32A.)

That idea of comic-book storytelling ties in with the Elijah/Dunn relationship. The shattering ending of the film is telegraphed when Elijah’s mother notes early on, of a comic book, that “They say this one has a surprise ending."

In this case, that surprise is a reflection of something we absolutely accept as inevitable in comics (yet somehow don't see as inevitable in the film): Every great hero has a great nemesis. Batman has the Joker. Superman has Lex Luthor. Spider-Man as Green Goblin, and so on.

 I made you. You made me. We are opposite sides of the same coin. Or as Elijah puts it, "We are on the same curve; just opposite ends."

In my book, The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television, I ranked Unbreakable among the top ten titles of the genre (at number 6, actually), and I stand firmly by that assessment. 

Unbreakable is a magnificent -- and rare -- superhero film because it isn’t really overly concerned with crime, or evil plans to control the world.  Nor is concerned with gadgets or huge action scenes and special visual effects.

On the contrary, Unbreakable concerns the heart of a superhero whose destiny has been blocked. Shymalan’s film examines the idea that David Dunn has lost hope because he can’t do what he was meant to do; protect us all.  

Similarly, it suggests that somebody on the same journey can become an evil monster, not merely lost or isolated, if he can’t understand his place. And yet for Elijah we still have sympathy. Unlike so many villains in the genre (who are evil for the sake of villainy and nothing else), we see why he is in pain; why he is driven to discover his purpose.  He is so terribly wounded.

Without a purpose, Elijah has been made, simply, to suffer. So he must know his purpose. There is no option for him.

Too many superhero films (from Marvel and D.C. among others) focus entirely on vengeance as a motivator for so-called “heroism.” Batman, Daredevil, the Crow, and other super heroes are often motivated by their need to “get back” at someone for the pain in their lives.  These films and these individuals routinely mistake revenge for justice.  Unbreakable eschews this terrible idea -- that hate can create heroes -- and suggests instead that heroism, and in particular, super-heroism, is really about the drive to protect and care for others.  

David becomes great not by hurting others, or by returning hurt for hurt. He becomes great by acknowledging his ability and his deep-seated need to save the innocent.  Oppositely, Elijah, hurts others so that he can understand his pain, and as a comic-book aficionado he understands exactly what that makes him: a super-villain.

Unbreakable thus restores a real sense of morality to the often wayward superhero genre, which consistently portrays angst, anger and violence as the skill set of great heroes. 

Superheroes? I don’t like them when they’re angry. 

And neither apparently does Unbreakable and M. Night Shyamalan.  Good for them.  By examining why some of us are driven to protect others and some of us are driven to hurt others, Unbreakable, according to Christopher Kelly, “reminds us of the essential magic of the cinema: to take us to a bold and dizzying journey into the great pop unknown.”

“I studied the form of comics.”

A campus security guard living and working in Philadelphia, David Dunn (Bruce Willis), is estranged from his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright Penn). 

After David miraculously survives intact a terrible train wreck that kills 131 other people, he stops to re-examine his life, and indeed, his relationship with his family.

Spurred on by a stranger who owns an art gallery and is a comic book aficionado, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), David begins to examine his past, and the decisions he has made about it.  Were those choices taking him closer to his destiny, or further from it?  Has he been hiding for years from the truth about his nature?

Elijah believes that David has been hiding. He also believes that comic books are a form of history, and that people like David may be protectors, guardians or even superheroes. 

Having suffered from a rare bone disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta his whole life, Elijah believes that his life too must have a purpose too.  He helps David find his place in the world, so that he may be sure, finally, of his place as well.

“These are mediocre times. People are beginning to lose hope.”

David Dunn is a lonely man. That is the visual message that is conveyed almost immediately in Unbreakable.  

He is isolated from others, including his wife, not only because he is so different from them (having never been sick), but because he is hiding from his real purpose; from his real identity.

In film’s first scene, Shyamalan finds an intriguing technique to reveal Dunn’s isolation. We view David sitting on a train in motion, from the vantage point of the seats in front of him. Or more accurately, from the “crack” or gap between two seats ahead of him.  As David attempts to hit on an attractive young woman, the camera moves left and right as each person talks; showing us David and then the target of his affections, and then David again.  

But here’s the thing: the two characters are not on screen together for any duration. David is always seen alone, even while he is attempting to connect to another person.  He can’t connect, the visuals imply, because he is denying his real self.  He can’t begin to reach out to others until he “sees” who he really is.

This composition probably sounds like a little thing -- the position of the camera in a simple dialogue scene -- but without a lot of showiness, Shyamalan has pinpointed the perfect composition to express David’s isolation.  Even when he is trying to reach out, he is alone.  And he will continue be, until he faces the truth about himself.

Elijah is more obviously differentiated from others. His terrible physical condition trapped him indoors when he is young.  His condition also gives him a limp in adulthood, and other physical differentiation from other people.  But in a very real way, David is just as isolated, even though he is at the opposite end of the spectrum.  Even though David never gets sick or hurt, and Elijah always gets hurt, they are the same, in a sense. Joined by their distance from normality.

Shyamalan explores the superhero milieu in some intriguing visual fashion in the film. He gives David Dunn a name of notable alliteration, for example, like Clark Kent, Peter Parker, or Bruce Banner. Similarly the director associates his characters with individual color schemes.  David’s world is all olive-green.  His uniform is an olive-green poncho (a cape and cowl?) and by contrast, Elijah’s world is all purple and flamboyant in coloring, a reflection of the first occasion upon which he saw a comic-book.  His mother wrapped up the issue in a purple package, and it changed his life. 

In almost all superhero stories, heroes and villains are similarly color-coded. We associate red, yellow and blue with Superman, for example.  Although Shymalan tones down the brightness a bit in Unbreakable, he accomplishes the same goal.  He gives his superhero and super-villain a consistent color scheme, even if it isn’t noticeable immediately.  This idea adds immeasurably to the concept of the film as a superhero origin story.

Also, Shymalan provides one or two variations of what I call "the Gargoyle Pose."  Superhero films are rife with this pose. A superhero stands alone on a building, or silhouetted in front of a tall building or other notable landscape.  The shot tells us that he is watching the world for us; but also that he is physically separated from the rest of us.  

The film goes further into superhero tropes, charting water as David’s equivalent of Kryptonite, and tagging his particular power, which I would call Psychometry. Specifically, David can discern knowledge of people and events simply by touching them.  

Importantly, Elijah and David don’t touch until Elijah wants him too; when he has determined his “place” in relation to David. That final touch represents the “surprise ending” of the film but also, ironically, the start of the real story.   David and Elijah's first "touch" -- shaking hands, essentially -- is also their last.  Their friendship will never be the same after that touch.

In essence, Unbreakable is an origin story, revealing how two men have come to know each other as friends before a lifetime of (presumed) animosity).  The next story in sequence s about how the two men -- on opposite sides of the law -- will clash for supremacy and dominance.  I’d love to see Shyamalan, Willis and Jackson return for an Unbreakable 2 that charts that particular story, the traditional superhero story.  

Unbreakable is veritably brimming with visual and narrative ingenuity, and there are few cheats in the film that take away from the new perspective that the denouement provides. Instead, Unbreakable packs an emotional wallop because at the same type we feel such happiness for David that he is finally pursuing his rightful destiny, we feel utter sadness for Elijah.  

We have seen that Elijah is loved dearly by his mother and that she has done everything in her power to make him strong and powerful.  But we also see that Elijah has been twisted by his sickness; twisted by his obsession to understand who he is; by his demand for "answers." The film’s ending works so powerfully because we love Elijah at this point, and even though he is “evil” in a very real sense, we love him no less.  Very few superhero movie villains are handled with such depth and indeed, sympathy, in the modern canon.

So does Unbreakable actually feature a twist ending at all?  As I’ve written before, Shyamalan is universally judged on the basis of his twist endings.  Either they work or don’t.  He can't seem to win on that front. Few critics stop to consider, however, whether these finales were intended to be viewed as a “twist.”  We certainly know from the telegraphing about a comic-book with "a surprise ending" that Shyamalan intended to shock the audience in this case. 

Yet, much like The Sixth Sense, there are clues all along in Unbreakable -- those bread crumbs I like to write about -- that prepare us for the final revelation. In this case, David and Elijah, our two main leads, are both associated with comic books, and both differentiated in terms of their fashion/color. Those are significant bread crumbs to consider.  Furthermore, Elijah’s Mom discusses with David the difference between a soldier villain (a brute, essentially) and an arch-enemy type nemesis (like Elijah), again preparing us for the dropping of the other shoe.

For me, the ending of Unbreakable isn’t about a “twist” so much as it is -- as is the case in all Shyamalan’s films -- about seeing and synthesizing, admittedly with new information, all the data we have previously made (incorrect) assumptions about.  I will say this, the end of Unbreakable doesn’t feel cheap, manipulative or gimmick to me.  It feels, instead, like destiny attained, and I believe that, in a nut-shell, is what the film is all about.  David has reached his apotheosis, and in doing so, has given Elijah his.  A real “twist” would come out of left field, and I would argue that there could be no other ending to Unbreakable, even if we can’t always see this one coming.

At the time of its release, some critics (like Maclean’s Shanda Deziel) suggested that the film was unable to “escape its shadow” (The Sixth Sense), but again, I disagree.  It's true: Unbreakable brings back Bruce Willis, and repeats Shyamalan’s signature obsessions. Specifically, the film functions with two characters acting as inverted reflections seeking their destinies. At the same time, it can be considered a deconstruction of the essential qualities of story-telling.  But this film chooses a different genre (superheroes rather than horror) to explore these fascinations.  

Assessing Unbreakable as a mere shadow of The Sixth Sense is, to me, like saying that Casino (1995) is a repeat of Good Fellas (1990).  

I mean, they’re both gangster movies, right? 

On the contrary, they are variations on a theme, and examples of a director creating a consistent canon; one in which the same ideas are investigated but from different angles, or in a different way.  

Unbreakable is a great film, and it suggests, perhaps, that in the the first decade of the twenty-first century M. Night Shyamalan was something akin to a franchise unto himself. His movies represent a series of meditations on similar themes, but with different specifics and outcomes. Each movie offers new characters and new genre ideas, but we keep going back to the concept of destiny interrupted, and a study of the ways that movies reflect storytelling tropes.

On Thursday: Signs (2002).