Unbreakable (2000)
Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here.
It’s fashionable these days to bash M. Night Shyamalan. After the mega success of his 1999 supernatural thriller, The Sixth Sense, everyone waited with baited breath to see what shocking surprise he would pull off in his next film. Instead they grew increasingly restless with each succeeding project. I agree that his latest films do not seem equal to his earlier efforts (although I have yet to see his latest, The Happening, which came out this summer), but I have a special fondness for Unbreakable, his follow-up to The Sixth Sense.
During the Christmas shopping season of 2000, when the movie opened, I got tired of being shoved, bullied and run over by overeager shoppers and decided to ditch the whole idea and go to the movies instead. I found myself the only person in the theatre for a matinee showing of Unbreakable. It created a cozy, intimate atmosphere that suited the mood of the picture.
Unbreakable is not for people expecting wall-to-wall action sequences and eye-popping special effects. It does have a surprise ending, the Shyamalan trademark, but it’s not of the same sort that made audiences gasp in The Sixth Sense. This is a reflective, thoughtful, character-driven mystery. It’s less about explosions and more about identity – how we define ourselves and our purpose.
Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, a man with a troubled marriage and a strained relationship with his son. He is also the only survivor of a horrific accident when his train derails. Not only does he survive, but he walks away without a scratch. Samuel L. Jackson plays Elijah Price, who was born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, more commonly known as brittle bone disease. The trauma of labor broke his arms and legs. The movie revolves around these two men’s journey of self-discovery. David wakes every morning full of a sadness he doesn’t understand which keeps a wall between him and his family. Elijah has such fragile bones that children call him Mr. Glass. Each one is trying to understand his place in the world.
This is also a story about family. David has pushed his family away, but is now trying to reconnect to his wife and son, Joseph. The boy is particularly hungry for a bond with his father, leading to some of the movie’s most powerful scenes. Bruce Willis has an affinity for working with child actors as he showed with his previous work with Haley Joel Osment. Here, once again, he brings out the best in his young co-star, Spencer Treat Clark.
Family is also important to Elijah. His bond with his mother is what inspires him to get out of bed in the morning as evidenced by a wonderful scene near the beginning of the movie. Little Elijah is afraid to leave his house because he knows that it’s more likely than not that he’ll encounter bad things. His mother refuses to let him hide away from the world and uses his love of comics to tempt him across the street to a park bench where a bright purple package awaits with a comic book inside. She promises him that every time he ventures out there will be another comic waiting for him. It’s a lovely moment for Charlayne Woodard, playing the mother, and Johnny Hiram Jamison, playing a young Elijah.
Samuel L. Jackson brings strength of character and determination to Elijah. Whenever you are tempted to feel sorry for Elijah’s plight, Jackson’s steely eyed passion forbids it. Robin Wright Penn is fine as Audrey Dunn, David’s wife, but ultimately this is a movie about a father, a son, and a man obsessed with finding a real superhero.
I watched this film in high definition on a Blu-Ray DVD and found myself amazed at how well it looked. I remembered the colors being predominately blues and grays with bright purple playing an important role. On Blu-Ray, a whole new palette is revealed. Suddenly, David’s world looked much warmer than I remembered. I was quite impressed by the transfer.
The quote I used at the beginning is from Elijah, but my response to the film is that there is something even scarier than not knowing your place: finding someone who defines himself by his relationship to you.
So, what do you think is Shyamlan’s best film or his worst? Why?
