Well-conceived e supernatural experience (The Sixth Sense (DVD))

Member Name: mcader

Product:	The Sixth Sense (DVD)
Date:	01/02/09 (7 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clever, spiritual, illuminating

Disadvantages: Director's Cut ?

This is a well-constructed and evocative supernatural experience, with its effective and much-celebrated twist. It manages to sustain the mood and tension it sets for itself throughout until tenuous moments towards the end.

The film is not spoiled by a knowledge of this twist, which does basically stand up to scrutiny, despite one's attempts to undermine it. The sixth sense in question is the ability to see dead people caught in a distressing or lost limbo after death. The real centre is actually about reaching out to people and genuinely helping people ('frightened and alone') when one has the opportunity. This is a task Dr. Malcome Crowe - Bruce Willis as a child psychologist - (unknowingly) has a second go at, again with a young boy with the sixth sense but this time in the form of Cole (Haley Joel Osmont).

Through their relationship, both characters are cured, the boy to suppress his fear of upset spirits by reaching out to them and in the case of Dr. Crowe, to realise his past mistake (which led to his being shot) and believe in someone; not to turn away from them but to approach and console; to genuinely feel for them. It leads Crowe also to ultimately heal a rift with his wife. However, some space should be left in accepting the details of this latter point (and it is worth remembering that the dead people 'only see what they want to see').

Personally, I think the film is almost too neat when it comes to the point where both characters relate their understanding of what they were in need of, to each other. Their difficulties seem very swiftly resolved. Despite this, both threads are well handled, and as a demonstration of people helping each other and forming a bond it is fine. For a far better focus on a ghost's (strained!) relationship with his still-living lover see the British Truly, Madly, Deeply (directed by Anthony Minghella).

Interestingly there is a strange circle in the working of the continuity in The Sixth Sense, ie, if there is a problem you do not face up to somewhere in your life, it may come and kill you so you can understand it in your death! There is also a parallel that since Dr. Crowe is a psychologist to living children, there is some reason behind his being associated with a child who is an unwitting psychologist to the (adult) dead!

The protection of the boy by some benevolent spirit - a guardian angel - is also an interesting element, perhaps of possessing the sixth sense. At one point it seems to release him from a dungeon at the top of a flight of stairs (is it his grandmother?) One wonders if the distressed man with the sixth sense at the beginning ever had an angel. It was obviously not strong enough to prevent his death.

There is colour-representation within the film. If one watches carefully, the colour red is significant of potentially explosive emotional moments - a jumper, a tent etc. According to the director the colour indicates 'anything in the real world that has been tainted by the other world'. Another fact is that it is only cold around spirits if they are angry or upset, which would explain why you don't see breath vapour throughout most of the film! The use of shadows also enhances the world of Philadelphia, an old and haunted city. The character of Crowe is rarely to be seen with a shadow, and he is always wearing similar clothes. These facets are indicative of a well-made film, re-enforcing an edgy conception of the forces that bind people and the coming to terms with grief and loss and the strife - internal and external - faced by us all. There are times when it is clear that the filmmakers took a few risks with the hidden agenda. The hospital scene in particular, where hushed dialogue with the boy reveals to Crowe the nature of the boy's sixth sense (including the words "they don't know they're dead"), has the camera closing in on Crowe's attentiveness....

Both Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osmont contribute considerably to the quiet intensity of the film, Willis displaying a dependable presence in subdued roles. The film scores by presenting a thread that enables it to be effective on multiple fronts. It is intriguingly unsettling, suddenly thrilling, quietly moving, amusing, and finally enlightening. Most prominently, it presents the audience with an involving and memorable perspective on the afterlife, and one which has something worthwhile to say about living life (reach out more and help!) It provides a hope that there is resolution after death, in connection with life, especially for those who have theirs dramatically cut short. Films like this, Flatliners or Ghost, that seek to convey a fresh and impressionable spiritual perspective (of things afoot or that 'there are more things in heaven and earth....') are always interesting.

The ending of the film centres on Crowe's face and fades out. I'm not sure if I wouldn't have preferred the director's original ending, where there is a post-wedding home-movie playing, watched alone by his drowsy wife. He is on the screen and talking in a (tipsy) Dr. Seuss voice. There is always something about this slightly artistic device, about the separation between a viewer and the subject on a screen that brings home the distance between them; in this case the fact that Dr. Crowe is now really gone from the world.

Summary: It manages to sustain the mood and tension it sets for itself throughout