Unbreakable / Split / Glass (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000-2019)

[therewillbeblus]

This is as good a time as any to put in a good word for Unbreakable specifically for the current sci-fi project. Superhero films waver on their qualifications depending on how much rope any viewer wants to give them, but here is a very intricate use of science-fiction to draw out the emotional and existentialist consequences of being granted superpowers. Willis' performance is perfectly internalized as he wrestles with abilities that his psyches' core beliefs refuse to embrace, as a challenge within a humanist framework of not deserving said strength. I think Tarantino said it best when he declared this film as a "brilliant retelling of the Superman mythology" and its grit and humanity bleed into each frame as a consequence of the unfathomable, realistic response to science-fiction entering life as we know it.

For very different reasons both this and Batman Returns will likely make my list, and though the Burton requires more flexibility to stretch even Suvin's theory, the Shyamalan is perhaps the most clearcut example of science-fiction because of the emphasis on this power as a debilitating anomaly that is so foreign to our world it spawns an existential crisis and nearly every defense mechanism in the book to suppress it.

[knives]

Oh yeah, I watched this because of the list and the first film, along with maybe The Village if I can convince myself that social experiments are sci-fi, will be making my own. I think Shyamalan has a good idea of how fantasy played as reality contains the deepest well for emotional development. That is played up significantly by his sincerity which I suspect is another thing many critics have a hard time swallowing. He has a premise and totally believes in it. That survives I think due to a confidence often mistaken for artistic arrogance.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm in full agreement with that. Self-seriousness is a huge turnoff for many, and that commitment is generally risky because if someone questions that internal logic by their own parameters it falls apart like a house of cards, as opposed to looser self-awareness, which gives audiences more flexibility to stretch their own perspectives to meet a film in the middle. Signs is one of the more notable examples I think (at least when I, who like many here I imagine followed him from the getco, observed people claiming that he had jumped the shark) because the twist can appear tacked-on in a messy attempt to have one in the first place to perpetuate his brand. However, if you back up and consider that the film is about the act of 'believing' unconditionally, Shyamalan isn't being lazy but rather expecting more from his audience, and challenging us on his terms. He is allowing enigmas to exist without a fully-elaborated dissection of the other sci-fi phenomenon in the premonitions, so the audience must join Gibson as a surrogate in just going with it, and trusting in a miracle without spoonfeeding further details that would make it more comprehensible and digestible.

[knives]

Ohh, I forgot Signs. That’s a real great one. It was actually the first film of his I watched as a Shyamalan film, after Wide Awake being a childhood favorite, and it led to a lot of great discussions on the playground regarding the nature of the aliens in the film. In hindsight I was probably wrong, but I remember taking the ending in the film as saying that fears are for naught with the Aliens trying to help out and the humans being too scared to appreciate the kindness of the other. My friends argued instead that the aliens were indeed bad guys and the ending was intended to make one think about a god who is active in the doings of the world. Any film that can get 13 year olds to delve in on that level is doing something right by my book.

Further to my friends’ point I remember at the release of The Happening Shyamalan was talking about how he cast Walhberg because he was a man who went to religion after a troubled youth which in itself seems a major theme going back to Pray with Anger.

[therewillbeblus]

I remember seeing it in theatres with my friends at 13 too, though I also saw Sixth Sense and Unbreakable in theatres with my dad. Today I learned that we're the same age(?)

I think you're reading of that film (which is also a sci-fi list-contender) as a kid is a nice possible angle, but is unfortunately thwarted by

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the detail of the stinger emerging from the alien's wrist, implying that it's going to do harm to the daughter. Every time I rewatch the film, including a few weeks ago, I like to imagine that you're correct though and that the alien is having a very "human" or animalistic response by taking revenge since Gibson chopped off its fingers earlier and/or only bringing out the stinger once they start crowding in on it in a fight/flight response (what would you do in the alien's position?) but there's not enough there for me to feel comfortable in subscribing to that position.

I think your friend is right, and thankfully because God's methods in the film are so ominous in how everything comes together, it is a call to trust and be open-minded and therefore notice opportunities that are everywhere, but that we are blind to when we live in rigidity and doubt. Even the aliens' intentions, as we're musing on in this discussion, are nebulous and therefore God's often-invisible interventions and human nature's imperfections mesh on screen in really interesting ways.

[knives]

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I thought the stinger was sending a medicine like the inhaler and that it was that that saved his life. Still, for thematic reasons I don’t think my reading holds water.

Also I’m pretty sure this actually means I’m about two years younger then you. I was 11 in 2002.

[therewillbeblus]

Ohh

[knives]

Now I’m laughing so if I die I’m blaming you.

[nitin]

The scene after he comes back home from finally deciding to use his new found powers, and carries his wife up the stairs, and it is all shot like he has taken flight ala Superman and Lois Lane, but which still also works emotionally in the context of the films is a fine example of the qualities of Unbreakable that modern superhero films just do not even try.

[therewillbeblus]

Great comparison, nitin, I hadn’t even looked at the scene that way but you’re dead right. I just watched the film yet again the other night and found the final nonverbal exchange at the end between Dunn and his son to carry much more weight than past viewings. For some reason I had incorrectly recalled that the son was the initiator of the reveal in reading the paper and looking up, forcing a surrender exchange of Willis becoming vulnerable. Instead, Willis is the one who disrobes his mask to initiate the connection with his son. It’s a profound moment of emotional humility where the adult admits that he needs his son’s love and admiration and bond just as much as the son needs his fatherly role. Usually the superhero takes off their disguise following a prompt as a last resort but here it’s a genuine yearning for a relationship on even playing field, without the power differential inherent in donning a mask. Yet another comparison to Batman Returns, which feels like the key other example of the superhero exposing themselves independently in an authentic desperation to embrace human connection as the most important use of one’s agency on a micro scale, to counter the macro scale of their superhero routine.

[knives]

Though Burton breaks that up with Devito’s hilariously asinine question.

[therewillbeblus]

Which question? I’m talking about the scene with Selina Kyle and Schreck, which I don’t really recall Penguin being a part of, since Batman and him had their battle just before?

[knives]

You’re right. I was thinking of Walker at the end when he asks why Bruce Wayne is dressed as Batman.

[therewillbeblus]

Ha that's good, but either way your point stands since the moment of vulnerability is interrupted with Kyle's rejection, sticking the knife in a naked man and twisting it. Though I also read that exchange as one of the most profound of the 90s, so I’m biased. The way Gotham and its characters’ relationships to their environment mimics the fears of 90s technology/capitalist promotion, and its residual alienation that disengages the individuals from their space, their peers, and themselves, prompts a hypothesis for science fiction membership. The re-imagining of the search for authenticity in artificiality is so exaggerated yet the meditations on identity-diffusion are eerily the same, similar to how futuristic sci-fi will examine relatable humanity persisting through different milieus and sociological changes.

To get back to this thread, by contrast the Shyamalan is almost entirely reminiscent of our current world, using real Philly locations, modest domestic spaces, conversations with lots of silence and subdued animated delivery of feelings, and the lenses are even toned down to mimic an urban desaturation of colors. Its realistic look almost feels wrong against many other movies that light up the frame to appear 'cinematically'-natural.

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The final confrontation between Dunn and Elijah is traditionally anticlimactic by depriving audiences of the action they may expect, but I find the division to be very climactic, though not in the superhero sense. In place of a battle is a brief disclosure where each man bears their vulnerable truths to the other and become driven further apart on moral grounds, but there's no regret or shame present. Instead, it's a revelation of each man's loneliness even amongst the only one who truly understands the other (or for Elijah, has validated his beliefs). The freeze-frame explanation on what happens next is a reminder of the comic-book narrative, allowing us to read a neat finish but visually rest in a scene of emotional intensity and depletion of trust. All closure is resigned to passive language, yet the persisting solitude of being different is burned into the celluloid.

[knives]

I think that ending is one of the most radical things ever. It basically says the real hero just does the right civic thing and removes the fascism from the genre that the film plays with by removing habeus corpus.

[therewillbeblus]

Exactly, a return to realism and infusing humanity into the superhero characters by both grounding them to our systems of ethics and having the emotional distress on Dunn be the culmination of the story. Elijah was right about him but wrong about the process, so gratitude and morality are continuing to battle within Dunn as the film ends despite the words we read about what comes next following the resolve of the crisis of conscience.