Conrad – 5/11/99
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan Starring Bruce Willis, Toni Colette, Haley Joel Osmond.
One criteria for judging a film can be the amount of time you spend thinking or talking about it afterwards, and on that count The Sixth Sense scores highly for me. In fact it stayed with me for days. Every now and then my partner or I would say to the other something like hang on what about the bit where blah blah happened, how do you explain that?
This is because The Sixth Sense is a film that happens in two parts – the majority of the film, which has its own construction, followed by the twist at the end that completely changes the context in which everything had happened before that. This assessment of the film in a new light is what kept me thinking about it for so long afterwards. Not since The Usual Suspects have I been so intrigued and surprised by the ending to a film. Obviously I’m not going to give it away, but anyone who has seen Siesta will know it’s not a completely new plot trick.
Of the flaws in the plot that I could see, it is possible that they were created by over editing so that vital information was missed out. Then again maybe I missed something. Certainly there was some very important information imparted at a whisper, so if you went to a session where people were talking or rustling chip packets you might have missed the point and would never know. The whispering contributed to a sense of menace and the fear that that created in the mind of an apparently rather disturbed 11 year old boy called Cole (Haley Joel Osmond). Cole does seem to have very good reason for being afraid, and for feeling so different to other people. The things he sees are pretty gruesome and scary, as much because they are presented in a way as if they are really happening to him, but also because the director employs some classic horror movie methods of scaring the bejeebies out of you at the most unexpected moment.
A bit of background plot teaser now – Bruce Willis plays the part of Crowe, a child psychologist who feels compelled to help Cole because of his failure to help a similarly disturbed child who confronts Crowe at the beginning of the movie. This sets up the rest of the movie where we see Crowe and Cole gradually getting to understand and trust each other, to the point where Cole tells Crowe of his secret. Other relationships explored are those of Crowe and his increasingly estranged wife (Olivia Williams), and of Cole and his increasingly frustrated and concerned mother (Toni Colette).
The plot seems to move very slowly at times and events tend to take on a dream like atmosphere at times. Willis pouts and smirks as usual but seems as equal to this kind of role as he is to the action hero, and his understated acting is certainly justified by the end of the movie. The supporting roles are convincing enough, but the real strength of this movie is the acting of Haley Joel Osmond as the disturbed Cole. He really is outstanding and is the essential ingredient to pulling the whole movie off. He also gets the best lines. It is just so refreshing to see a young actor in an American movie actually act convincingly the part of a child, let alone the complexities this part carried with it.
The verdict? – scary, surprising, intriguing, and worthy of much retrospective musing – a thoroughly good bit of entertainment that ultimately well justifies its slower moments.
