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Review: "Unbreakable"
Shyamalan puts on quite a cinematic show and trots out all kinds of neat director's tricks, a la Hitchcock. There are long and odd close-ups, elaborate circling shots, dark and dreary skies, loving and lavish Philadelphia street and interior scenes.
No wonder many of the critics are befuddled by this inventive and deliciously creepy film. This movie doesn't have a cellphone, computer, or explosion in it.
Willis plays a security guard named David Dunn, who miraculously survives a disastrous train wreck. It belatedly occurs to him and to others that there might be something special about him, since he has survived some earlier catastrophes in his life, and has never been sick a day in his life. Enter Elijah Price (Jackson), a comic book student and collector who has been searching all of his life for people who miraculously survive things. This is great acting from Willis, perhaps his best. His character is a man lost and out of kilter, almost in hiding. He knows there's something very off about his life, that he has a different destiny, but he can't get a grip on what it is. So he spends his days frisking drunks and weirdos at football games.
Dunn, a former football hero, is having marital troubles, and isn't quite sure why he's drawn to working security in a Philadelphia college sports stadium. He wakes up every morning sad and frightened. It's Price who stuns him by suggesting what his real destiny might be.
The movie is a bit dawdly in parts, but the story-telling really is astonishingly faithful to the comic-book genre: simple, improbable, fantastic. Shyamalan's cinematic style is painstaking and very simple. This movie is a feast for people who pay attention to things like pace, direction and camera angles (there is actually a 15-minute sequence without a word of dialogue, one of the longest in years), and it captures the poignant ambivalence of the tortured superhero perfectly.
We are pulled along as Price badgers Dunn along with Dunn's son (Spencer Treat Clark) to come to terms with who and what he might be. Dunn's son worships him, and as a kid, is perhaps able to see him more clearly than Dunn can see himself.The boy has a certainty about his father that is both funny and powerful -- at one point even frightening -- and it becomes a key element in the movie.
The Superhero stories are among the great and most enduring American myths, an often unacknowledged part of this country's original and unique folklore. One of the distinctive traits of the Superhero genre in comics is the ambivalence of many of the characters. Heroes (Batman, Spiderman, the literal Superheroes themselves) are often innocents. They are ambivalent, reluctant. They are far from indestructible, in fact they are all oddly vulnerable. They never asked for their gifts or reveled in their powers. They have no ambition, other than to lead more normal lives than they are permitted -- just like the Willis character. They are ruled by their destiny, and crippled by their mortality. If their deeds are heroic, their sense of themselves is complex. They are almost all broody and strange. They have gifts they didn't ask for and don't really want, a part of them always wishing they could go about their lives just like everyone else.
What drew many of us to comics in the first place was that this strange assortment of distinctive heroes were both superhuman and all too human. They are different from us, yet just like us. This understanding is at the heart of Unbreakable, and one of the many reasons it works so well.
I have a theory about Unbreakable that seems to be at odds with what everyone else thinks about the ending. That probably means I'm just wrong, but I'd like to get some feedback on the theory:
The Jackson character never says he is the opposite of the Willis character. Oh, he implies it a lot, and the screenplay leads us in that rather obvious direction. But even at the end, Jackson never directly says he is the opposite of Willis. My theory, then, is that Jackson is not the villain that everyone assumes is the lame ending.
Oh sure, he's insane all right. And he does evil things in setting up the disasters. But he's not the villain because he does those things for good reasons -- insane reasons, but with a good motive: To find a hero that can help humankind. If he were truly evil, and not just insane, the last thing he would want is to find a hero, for it would interfere with his evil actions (as actually does happen at the end when he goes to prison). Talk about stupid actions for a villain! But then, as I said, he never does come out and call himself a villain, or say that he is Willis' opposite. We just assume this from the carefully crafted writing and the way the characters dress and act.
Since I heard Unbreakable is supposed to be part one of a trilogy, I think the real villain is yet to be revealed. My theory is that the wife is the real villain. Consider, she is the one who contstantly tries to stop Willis from acting on his hero tendencies. She is the one who holds him back. When Willis survives the train wreck miraculously, she rushes back into his life to hold him down again. And, most significantly, in the screenplay, she is the only one who explicitly says she is the direct opposite of Willis' personality!
My theory is that the Jackson character is well-meaning but insane, while the wife is seemingly benign but actually the one doing the most to stand in Willis' way, preventing him from acting as a hero. Far-fetched, yeah, but maybe the next movie will reveal this. In any case, it seems a less obvious (and lame) ending than the movie actually had. It seems unlikely such a good writer who is so good at misdirecting an audience would settle for such an obvious choice of villain.
Those of you who have seen this movie, what do you think? Viable theory, or have I overlooked something in the screenplay?
________________
________________
Private Essayist
sGreenHornet asks: So Mr. Willis do you have any other films in line with M. Night Shyamalan? (or you rather not say)
And Willis' reply...
bruce_willis_live: Unbreakable is the first part of a trilogy of films.
bruce_willis_live: I can't tell you about the others ...
bruce_willis_live: But we're supposed to do two more.
bruce_willis_live: you'll understand how it lends itself to a continuing story.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
One of things I like most about Shyamalan's
...)
style is how every scene is dense with meaning.
For example, there's color coding, which also played an important
role in the Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis's character, David Dunn, is
associated with the colors yellow and green. If you watch the
movie with this in mind, you'll see it in almost every scene. His
clothes are almost always a combination of these two colors. Even
when he's washing dishes, he has a green shirt and is using a yellow
dish towel. His house is yellow with green trim. His raincoat
and uniform are green with yellow writing (green and yellow are
the colors of the fictional Franklin State University). The
superhero in the comic young Elijah receives as a child is yellow
and green. The superhero action figure David's son Joseph plays
with is green and yellow. And so on.
Samuel Jackson's character, Elijah Price, is associated with the
color purple. In the very first scene of the movie, the baby
Elijah is coddled in a blanket with purple trim. His coat
has a purple lining. Even a casual viewer will have noticed this.
(On a side note, in Judaism, Elijah is the prophet that is expected
to announce the coming of the Messiah
The two color schemes are used together in interesting ways.
For example, in the scene in which Elijah and David's wife
Audrey are speaking at the medical clinic, the rug consists of a
checkered pattern of squares: yellow circles in green squares on
the one hand, and purple squares with blue trim on the other. It's
very striking, especially in the aerial shot.
Another color sometimes associated with David and his family
is a dark maroon. His hat at work is this color, for example.
When he tells Elijah of his near drowning as a child, he's wearing
a shirt of this color under his jacket, just showing through.
When Joseph threatens to shoot him, Joseph's shirt is yellow
and maroon, and Audrey has a maroon undershirt.
I think this color is explained by something David says during
his dinner date with Audrey: his favorite color is rust. I think
that's what this color must be -- dark rust. Why rust? It's what
happens when water damages what is otherwise strong iron and steel.
It symbolizes his vulnerability -- water is his weakness.
Another recurring theme, almost the leitmotif of the movie, is
the upside-down shot. It starts with the little girl in the
train who watches David with her head upside down. It continues
when Joseph sees the news of the accident on TV, his head dangling
upside down from the couch.
You see almost the same thing when Elijah is lying on the
staircase in the subway, and sees the man with the gun upside
down. When he receives his first comic book as a child, it's
upside down (and we're given some foreshadowing by the mother:
"They say this one has a surprise ending" ). David and Audrey's
accident leaves their car upside down. There are more examples
but I'll stop.
So what's the point? I think Shyamalan is underscoring the
nature of the plot: he's turned the classic comic book story
upside down: instead of the villain trying to destroy the
superhero, he's actually trying to *create* him.
Perhaps others noticed things I've missed. I'd like to
hear what others think.
-David
But he's not the villain because he does those things for good reasons...
You really need to read more comic books, read more fiction, and watch more movies in general.
In real life, no one hardly ever thinks that they're the bad guy. The Unabomber thought he was doing what was right (stopping the evils of modern society). The guy who shot all those abortion doctors thought he was doing what was right (bring justice to baby assassins). People who embed nails in trees which result in fatal or crippling logging accidents think they're doing what is right (saving the forest from greedy rapists of the earth). Heck, that guy last week who was working with his mom to try to sell off his nephew on the Russian black market to be broken down into organs said he was "pursuing his dream."
I'm getting side tracked though. In fiction there are three major kinds of villians:
1) Those who are evil for the sake of being evil.
2) Those who are merely selfish and ruthless.
3) Those who are willing to commit evil for the greater good.
The first one is simply lame. "Ooo, I am darkness incarnate. Fear me!" The only time it even remotely works is when supernatural forces of Evil are involved. Even then, it has become cliche. The best villians all fall into the latter categories. Even the insane and evil Hannibal Lecter is a case of the second category. He's not doing it to be evil, he's just willing to go to any extreme to satisfy his darker desires. However, this is still not a villian doing things for the greater good.
In the realm of superheroes and comic books, the best example of a villian doing something for the greater good is Magneto. Magneto has seen what happens when a minority is oppressed in the extreme when growing up in WWII Germany. He is fighting back so that mutants will come out on top. In his eyes, he is completely justified for anything he does. He is trying to be a savior to his people. So, don't discount Mr. Glass as a villian just because he thinks he's justified. The justified villian is a fictional archetype reaching back as far as literature has been being written. It's very much a cornerstone of the pulp genre which led to the development of modern comics.
Viable theory, or have I overlooked something in the screenplay?
You also might want to consider that every superhero has more than one villian. Mr. Glass would just be the first that David Dunn faces.
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