“I know what’ s going metformin side effects 500mg through your mind right now. You’re searching for meaning in all of this. Know one thing. One hundred and thirty-one people died so you could finally understand the destiny for which you were born. Are you ready for the truth?”
That line metformin hydrochloride generic name is pulled from the end of the first trailer to M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up to The Sixth Sense. That trailer for Unbreakable has stuck with me for ten years and continues to reign as my favorite of all time. It’s perfect. In two minutes it introduces the character, sets up the premise and asks a troublingly delivered question from Samuel L. Jackson. See for yourself.
It’s hard for me to think that when Night wrote these words he didn’t already have the trailer in his head; they’re almost too perfect. Every morning David Dunn (Bruce Willis) wakes up with a feeling of sadness that he can’t explain. Until, after the train crash, he meets Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a man who proposes him with an idea that, however preposterous as it may seem, is about to become more real than ever.
“It’s alright to be afraid, David, because this part won’t be like a comic book. Real life doesn’t fit into little boxes that were drawn for it.”
What if superheroes existed in the real world? They likely wouldn’t be as exaggerated as they are in comics, but Night proposes that comic books are the last form of an ancient visual history passed down through generations. He proposes this idea in the world of the film, and it’s written and crafted in such a way that it’s completely believable. This is no easy task.
Unbreakable is easily one of my favorites and rests comfortably in my top 5 favorite films of all time¹. The directorial aspects of Night that I loved so much already from The Sixth Sense were mere shadows to how well he directed every frame of Unbreakable. The first, most notably, was visual composition. In Unbreakable the camera exists with the characters and plays its own role. It’s not as simple as going handheld (a woefully overused practice today), but rather a finesse and choreography in one-shot takes that Night is so skilled at.
The best example is the opening of Elijah’s birth in the dressing room of a department store that overwhelms me with Double Rainbow-like awe every time. The choreography of the scene and the composition of the set using a mirror to view multiple speaking characters is a brilliant use of space. It’s nearly three minutes long and the movements are so precise, so calculated and pre-visualized, that it’s not just a testament to DP Eduardo Serra (Blood Diamond, HP & the Deathly Hallows 1/2), but the timing of every actor with their dialogue and physical movements, and Night’s ability to see the effectiveness of this as a director. This is Night at the top of his game.
Night has always had an affinity towards the exploration of familial interactions. Cole and Lynn had an incredibly rich relationship in The Sixth Sense, and in Unbreakable David’s family has an equally complicated one. It’s a marriage falling apart, a family on the verge of separation, and a child so desperate to believe in keeping them together that he holds onto anything he can to make them feel something again. In his own belief lies the driving theme behind the entire film itself, and a quote that has remained one of my favorites because it not only defines David Dunn, but so many people in everyday situations of life.
“It’s hard for many people to believe there are extraordinary things inside themselves.”
Self-belief. David Dunn is a man with none of it. He’s passive and quiet. He doesn’t hold himself up to standards or expectations of others. A star college quarterback, David faked an injury as an excuse to retire from what many would have believed was his God-given gift. He settled for a job as a security guard, and that never really meant something to him. He was unhappy himself and in a decaying marriage, but had settled because he didn’t know what else there was to life. His entire way of life had hit a plateau. He had no belief in what he might be capable of, or that he could have been capable of anything to begin with.
“You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here… That’s… That’s just an awful feeling.”
But his son, Joseph, did, even if he couldn’t fully understand it. Joseph had the same naive belief every kid has of their father: they’re a superhero. This time that happened to literally be the case. Once Joseph heard Elijah’s opinion, he wouldn’t let David forget it. Because while David actually was special all along, he needed belief to find his destiny. Joseph’s belief helped push him to that. Once that acceptance came, once the realization showed true to David that he might have a larger purpose and destiny, he was ready to finally start doing what he was supposed to do. This not only took to affecting his destiny directly but his marriage and family in once again becoming whole.
Night plays to the subtlety of human emotion and interactions for even his major plot points of the story. Once that belief starts to seep through, David doesn’t go out and jump off a building or shoot himself in the chest to drive home the message of his unbreakable-ness. He tests it with a bench press in his basement weighted with paint cans and water buckets. It works so incredibly well because of the human element. Night constantly builds the characters and their relationships. This scene contains emotion, humor and drama between a father and son. It’s a scene that furthers the state of belief in David. He’s still not sure what to believe, but he’s closer to the truth than he ever was by believing there’s any truth at all.
“You could have been a tax accountant. You could have owned your own gym. You could have opened a chain of restaurants. You could’ve done of ten thousand things, but in the end, you chose to protect people.”
In moments like these Night grounds the unbelievable in believable circumstances. Every test of faith that David must cross maintains its subtle foundation. (Unbreakable is the Mad Men of superhero movies and Hero’s Journey depictions. That’s my self-proclaimed greatest film-to-television analogy ever. Challenge it, I dare you.) Even more than that, I believe the film has religious undertones through the idea of hope. As Andy Dufresne once told us, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Hope runs through Unbreakable ever so slightly, but for some reason has surfaced for me more than most. It’s this universal idea that, no matter who or what you believe in, I think we all like to believe that there’s someone looking out for us, protecting us and making sure we’re safe. It doesn’t slap you in the face and mean God. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be religious. For me it is. For anyone else, it could be a simple protector like a father, husband, wife, sister, brother, etc. The purpose is in the comfort and faith in some kind of hope. It’s a simple message, but to me it’s as clear as any. Once upon a time, Night was as good as anyone in taking simple messages like hope, destiny or self-belief and using them to weave an elaborate tale. It’s an innate storytelling ability that cannot be taught.
After the success of The Sixth Sense, Night had the most ridiculous of expectations from fans and critics around the world. Unbreakable was never going to live up to that hype. It wasn’t that kind of film. It was (and still is) in a class of its own made at the dawn of the comic book age. It contains the classic superhero origin arc but pays reverence to the medium rather than homage through frame-for-frame replications. These were truly the glory days of Night’s career, at the height of his power, doing something he loves. To this day Bruce Willis still gets asked about a sequel to Unbreakable and comments that he’d love to do it. Even Night originally said he built this story as the origin chapter of a trilogy, and that it’s one he’s always gone back to and thought about exploring further. I’m not really sure how I feel about that. There’s always the fear that subsequent chapters won’t live up to their predecessor (The Matrix), and might even detract from the effect and power of the original (The Matrix). Sometimes things are best left alone. I wouldn’t mind if Unbreakable stayed that way.
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¹This refers to my favorites, not implying Unbreakable is one of the top 5 films ever made. Big difference.
