Mister Minutes' Cinema Circus

Originally published on February 8, 2021.

I'm a sucker for the older M. Night Shyamalan movies. Signs is one of my favorite alien movies (even with its weird religious overtones), The Village has an incredible twist (on first watch only), I even enjoy Lady in the Water (even with M. Night's weird, narcissistic, masturbatory self-insert character). In these movies before the gimmick of a Shyamalan movie got rightfully stale, I enjoy the slow pace and measured delivery; they have a weird vibe to them for sure, but I've always appreciated how, even for their weird concepts, Shyamalan doesn't resort to crazy violence or over-the-top performances. People who watch movies will talk about the "heightened reality" in, say, Tarantino movies: more saturated colors, near-constant swearing, and casual violence rule the sensibilities of some films. M. Night Shyamalan creates a "subdued reality", and nowhere is that more evident than in Unbreakable.

The film stars Bruce Willis as meek security guard David Dunn coming home to Philadelphia after a disappointing job interview in New York. The train he's on suddenly derails, killing all 133 passengers and crew except for him. David is left without a single scratch or bruise, and soon finds a mysterious letter from Elijah Price, a comic book obsessive and art collector with a disorder that makes his bones as brittle as glass. Price wants to meet with David because he's spent years searching for someone with superhuman abilities, a protector to give people hope in a "mediocre world". David is rightfully wary of Price and tries to keep him at arm's length, but Elijah keeps pressing him about past injuries, and asking whether he's ever gotten sick in his life. We come to realize that David cannot be hurt by anything except water - he'll sink and drown like a normal person - and he has a sort of spider-sense, getting a vision if he touches someone who has recently committed a crime. With Price and his own son Joseph encouraging him to embrace his abilities, David eventually decides to hone his talents and become exactly what Price says he is.

In a world where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is so ingrained into our collective consciousness, it's kind of nice to go back to 2000, when comic book movies were basically dead, before X-Men and Spider-Man breathed new life into the genre. After Batman and Robin simultaneously killed interest in the already unpopular superhero genre and fed into the super cartoony trend of mid-to-late 90's films like The Mask and Mystery Men, one could say Shyamalan tried the first "gritty, realistic" superhero movie. There are no flashy costumes or absurd powers here, just a depressed bald guy and a lonely, frail man. There is almost no action in the entire movie, no major character deaths, no personally motivating tragedy for the hero; no over-saturated colors or snappy one-liners, no divulging of a diabolical plan; hell, the words "superhero" and "villain" are never spoken outside of the context of Elijah's collected comic art. On the outside, there's nothing to indicate that Unbreakable is a superhero movie; from the outside, it's kind of hard to tell what kind of movie it's supposed to be at all, and while I think it would be a lesser film if it were more overtly about a hero and villain, I do see how the lack of those overt elements unfortunately led to Unbreakable being generally forgotten in the Shyamalan canon, and that of superheroes in general, by the general moviegoing public. It's considered today - and rightly so - to be one of the best superhero movies ever and has a big cult following, but I still never hear it mentioned when people talk about Shyamalan movies, which is a shame.

Personally, I think the film hits everything it's trying to accomplish really well, while keeping everything grounded. First and foremost, Unbreakable is a drama about David's dissatisfaction with his life. He loves his son Joseph, but his relationship with his wife Audrey (Robin Wright) is on the rocks; David's been distant, they don't sleep in the same bed anymore, and he's planning to move to New York. Audrey is giving him space but desperately wants to reconnect with her husband. She breaks down in grateful tears when he tells her he hasn't been with anyone else.

We come to realize that David's depression stems from an "injury" he sustained in a car crash that ended his football career. In actuality, it's revealed that he faked the injury - because he can't be hurt - in order to be with Audrey instead of furthering his sports career. Now, years later, he's experiencing an ennui. He doesn't know what to do with his life, doesn't know what his purpose is.

Enter Elijah Price, played masterfully by Samuel L. Jackson: a sickly child, Elijah is afflicted with brittle bones, and so is afraid to go outside for fear of bullies and the perpetual injuries he suffers from his condition. His mother coaxes him out of the house with comic books, promising him one book for each time he wants to go outside. As an adult, he is obsessed with the medium that saved his life ("I spent a third of my life in the hospital with nothing to do but read."). Now, as an adult, he is a collector of comic art and owner of an impressive personal collection of comic books. He believes that, because of his disease and frail body, he sits at one end of a "spectrum", and has been searching for years to find a person at the other end of the spectrum: physically powerful and resolute, someone who can give people hope and comfort. In the end, it is revealed that Price was the perpetrator of three horrific "accidents" that claimed hundreds of lives: a plane crash, a hotel fire, and the train derailment that David Dunn walked away from. Just as David comes to accept his role as a hero for the people of his city, so too does Elijah accept his role as David's arch nemesis, and embraces the childhood nickname given to him by his bullies: Mr. Glass.

As a superhero origin story, Unbreakable is perfect. Sure, it follows a formula that we're all very familiar with now, but it's handled here with such seriousness in its realization, without being preachy or stuck up its own ass. One thing I really applaud the movie on is how it really takes its time setting up the "hero-ness" of David. In a movie like Spider-Man or Batman Begins, the hero gets his costume and powers/gadgets around the middle mark of the movie: Peter Parker somehow designs and constructs his suit all on his own, and Bruce Wayne buys/customizes military weaponry to create his arsenal. In Unbreakable, David Dunn's costume is foreshadowed beautifully, but not fully utilized as such, until the climax of the film. David's costume is his drab, ordinary, dark green raincoat, which serves double function as part of his security guard uniform, and as protection from his one weakness, water. As I'm writing this 21 years later, it would be easy to point at Shyamalan and giggle about how unsubtle the fact is that it's part of his security guard uniform, but I honestly love it as a metaphor and for its practicality. David isn't a billionaire playboy who can buy tanks on a whim, nor does he suddenly become a master seamster between scenes like Peter Parker. He's an ordinary man working an ordinary job, and the raincoat fulfills a practical purpose while also serving as a great visual stand-in for a cape.

Mr. Glass doesn't need a costume; he already has one. From the first time we see him as an adult, he wears a tight sort of trench coat that hugs his body, as well as dark gloves and a glass walking stick. He has purposely fashioned himself a comic book outfit, he completely stands out against the normal Philadelphians around him, because he sees himself as separate, apart from society. He's spent so much time in his comic books that he sees himself as a character, and so dresses like one. The only times where we see him in more normal clothes (a grey sweater and black pants) are two scenes where he has to rely on other people to help him. After a nasty fall that breaks his limbs, Price receives physical therapy from Audrey; later, we see him sulking in a comic book store, frustrated and angry with David's refusal to be a hero, and has to be pushed to the exit by a disgruntled cashier. Price has a tantrum and knocks books off of shelves as he's pushed past them, otherwise completely at the mercy of the cashier.

It's wonderful to see Willis and Jackson playing characters so far outside of the types for which they're known now. Bruce Willis got big as an action star of course, all guns and bravado, but David Dunn is a meek, soft-spoken man dealing with depression. There are no fist fights in the movie; even when his son pulls a gun on him to prove that he can't be hurt, David uses the power of his Stern Dad Voice to deescalate the situation, instead of lunging to slap the gun out of his hands or something and getting shot anyway, which a modern version of this story might do. Jackson similarly gives a low-key, but incredible performance. He's often caricaturized for shouting and being a Badass Killer type in nearly every movie he's in, but Elijah Price is a calm, calculating, mindful character. He isn't a world-weary hardened killer, he's a mentally unhinged comic nerd, and Jackson plays him that way really well. He talks with the self-importance of that one kid in high school who read high literature and considered himself smarter than everyone else.

As a quick side note, I have to heap praise on cinematographer Eduardo Serra. The movie is full of wonderful creative shots, like the opening scene where David has a conversation with a woman on the train. The whole conversation is shot from the point of view of the little girl in the seat in front of them, with the camera shifting side to side to get a view of each character framed between the seat cushions as they talk. There are also a handful of shots where the camera momentarily becomes David's POV, like when he follows a killer around a pillar (rhyming unintended). Two of the best shots are so good and so naturally creative that I didn't even think of their implications at first, really. The very first shots of Elijah Price as a baby, and as a child, are shot through reflections. Most of the opening scene, his birth, is shot through a wide mirror; later, as a lonely twelve-year-old, he is seen in the reflection of a blank TV screen. Finally, his very first meeting with David and Joseph, the first time the characters lay eyes on each other, is shot through a pane of glass.

It's really a shame you can't forget a good movie in order to experience it fresh all over again. Of course Shyamalan is ridiculed now for his patented twist endings, but the reveal of Price as the villain is a legitimately good one. All through the movie you could see him as just an obsessive comic fan; clearly he has some screws loose, and his encouraging David to become a hero might lead to him getting hurt, but for the most part he seems harmless (obvious villain costume aside). He could have just been a metaphor for an obsessive fan, but at the very end of the movie, when David is ready to embrace his role as hero, Price says "I think here's where we shake hands." He knows for a fact that David will see his crimes once he touches his hand; he's purposely revealing himself, because he sees it as his role in the world to be David's arch nemesis. He's okay with being the villain, being a killer, because he has created a hero for others to look up to. The film is a twofer of origin stories; Elijah's descent into madness and mass murder begins before David's story, so he's already halfway there by the start of the movie, but the movie is still a wonderful dance between the characters. As Price shapes David into the comic book hero he's always looked up to, so does David unwittingly fuel Price's obsession and enable his delusions.

Unfortunately, when I say that comes at the end of the movie, I mean the very end of the movie. David, upon realizing what Price really is, turns away and leaves, hurt and confused. Suddenly we pause, with Exposition Text on screen telling us what the actual resolution is, like the end of fucking Animal House. "David Dunn went to the police and turned Price in, who was arrested on charges of terrorism. Price is now serving life in an insane institution." It's a really abrupt, cop-out ending right at the big reveal, the second climax of the movie. David's just had his big hero moment, his first outing as a hero where he saves two kids from a crazy man who's killed their parents. It's a great, triumphant moment for him, followed by the gut-wrenching realization that the man he considered his friend is actually a mass murderer. It should be an emotional peak for both characters, the hero and villain seeing each other plainly for the first time, and David realizing he's been playing into the hands of a psychopath. Instead, it's cut off in a supremely awkward way that really puts a damper on the preceding story. The rest of the film is so legitimately good, a really artistic and realistic take on a superhero story, that having such a jarringly abrupt ending is really shocking, and not in a good way.

Ending aside, I absolutely recommend Unbreakable if you're in the mood for a slow, grounded drama that also happens to be about a superhero at the end. The whole cast gives incredible performances, the cinematography is beautiful, and it makes me really excited to see what Split and Glass have in store. Look forward to reviews of those two coming soon! I still have to work up the courage to brace 2° F to get the Netflix DVD back to the mailbox.