2000 | Auteur Theory

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis [David Dunn], Samuel L. Jackson [Elijah Price], Spencer Treat Clark [Joseph Dunn]

David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is a security guard who is miraculously the lone survivor survives a highly fatal train crash, finds himself the subject of a theory that explains his good luck. When news of the crash is made public, a man who is excessively weak tracks him down to try to explain to Dunn about his unique unbreakable nature.

My rating: 8.5/10

Unbreakable-featured-image

Narrative aspects

M. Night Shyamalan is a brilliant storyteller with unique ideas and concepts. Within the world he creates, the detail is so well-rounded and there are continuity and consistency with everything, down to the slightest of cues that an audience may not even catch. At the beginning of ‘Unbreakable’, before the film even starts, there are a series of titles giving the audience information about comic books and their sales. At first, it seems completely random though later on the concept of comic books becomes a clear and main point in the story. Moreover, the scene with the birth of Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the protagonist in the story, and how he has a condition that affects the strength of his bones is addressed later on. Everything in the film has a purpose to serve, nothing is present without reason.

The theory of the Hero’s Journey could be applied to this film since it has a protagonist that follows the pattern of any classic comic character with having powers, called to carry out a duty for society hut refusing the reality of such abilities at first. The character development is done gradually, without fully relying on flashbacks alone. A mixture of previous encounters with dialogues addressing their past lives is used, with the choice of action and interaction with other characters giving clues to the audience as well as furthering the plot. An example is a scene where David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the protagonist, is on a train heading for his hometown Philadelphia and upon a woman asking if the seat next to him is free, discreetly removes his wedding ring from his finger. This action clearly indicates, before even meeting any other characters, that he is having some marital issues, perhaps a divorce in the process. M. Night Shyamalan executes such a device of ambiguity and implications without directly telling or showing an audience a certain angle extremely well. It involves an audience and sort of forces them to look at the film more deeply than just watch it for a pass time. Like any mystery thriller, details of the plot are shown one at a time so that the audience can absorb and keep on track with the fast plot and as the characters learn about conditions too.

The two polar opposites of characters, David Dunn and Elijah Price, are depicted brilliantly, with their abilities being at the other end of each other on the spectrum, to start with. Dunn is physically strong where Elijah is not though Elijah is mentally strong and extremely smart. Both characters come from different childhood backgrounds, deal with different kinds of people, have different jobs and personalities and yet they are linked to each other. The difference of their abilities, in a rather confusing way, is what makes them similar. David Dunn is supposed to be the superhero while Elijah Price is the supervillain, due to the actions they commit as well as given the comic book background this film pursues. It gives the film a sense of realism since the superhero aspect is not as fictional as in mainstream comic movies like the Marvel or DC Cinematic Universes. More than laser vision, flight or mind control, Dunn and Elijah enjoy and suffer, respectively, from physical characteristics that any human could actually have.

Like any Shymalan film, one is not complete without a plot twist. ‘Unbreakable’ introduces the classic character plot twist where the ‘enabler’ turns out to be nothing more than the real villain. It has the message ‘now you are worthy to fight me’ flowing throughout this turning point in the film. The twist would bring about a mixture of speculation and emotions from the audience watching. Some may like to see a sequel, where the relationship or rivalry between Price and Dunn progresses and where Dunn unlocks his true potential, like any superhero story.

Infer & Deduce: The film’s title is interesting since it is a characteristic that inanimate objects share. Thought, however, alludes to a human being, a character in the film that has the ability to be invincible. While watching the film, the title’s reason of choice becomes obvious since the audience is introduced to David Dunn, the protagonist with the ability of superstrength and to sense the wrongdoings a person has done or is going through. He has never fallen sick, nor had any injury, making him a person who is literally ‘unbreakable’. To counter, the first scene of the film involves the birth of Elijah Price though after learning about his medical condition that causes weak bones, the audience is aware that he isn’t the character that the film’s title is referring to.

Technical Aspects

Along with M. Night Shyamalan’s brilliant storytelling technique, his visual and cinematographic style of presentation is unique and engaging in some ways. Generally, in this film the camera shots and movements are carried out as though the audience is an outsider, poking into and eavesdropping on the conversations and lives of the characters. This gives a clear peek into the action on the screen while the audience feels involved in the story and in whichever way the characters are affected the audience would feel something similar. An example of this is the scene where David Dunn is sitting on a train on his way to Philadelphia and a woman takes a seat next to him. The camera doe snot make the usual jump-cuts from one character’s angle to the other as a usual presentation of a conversation would go but it is actually in one take, with the camera moving back and forth on the seats in front of them and creeping through the crack in the seats. This gives an audience the feeling that they do not belong there and while given a view of the characters on the train, they feel bad for sort of ‘listening in’ on a conversation. Moreover, this choice of camera movement and angle depicts the disconnection the audience has with Dunn since this is the first scene with him and they are not aware of who he is and what is his significance to the story.

The camera rarely stays still. Even in situations where the shot does not change, the camera dollys towards the subject slowly, keeping the pace constant and not boring for an audience. Shyamalan uses movement more than varying shot types, having many scenes in one take along with focusing on having many multiple characters in a frame to simultaneously display both reactions and attitudes. To add on, the camera acts as a direct insight towards what the characters know and find out, like for example, when Dunn exited the memorial service for the train crash, the camera would sort of follow his gaze and would only reveal scene cues when the character would notice them. Another very unique example of brilliant camera movement is when young Elijah Price opens up a present and finds a comic laying inside the box, only that it is upside down from his view. As he holds the corners of the comic and turns it to face him straight, the camera follows this action, taking the audience around in a complete turn of 360° till he finally can see the name and picture properly. It looks phenomenal, almost as it is a first person point of view angle.

Shyamalan also plays around with sound when he wants to convey a certain character reaction or emotion across to the audience. By manipulating the level of ‘noise’ in a scene, like a background ambience from people talking or cars driving, the audience steps into the mind of the character directly, understanding the emotions or the atmosphere in the fictional setting of the film. An example of this is the scene where Dunn finds out that after the train crash he is the only one that survived, without a broken bone. His shock and detachment from reality while absorbing that news is displayed by nothing but the sound of slow wind and silence in the background, while the camera focuses on Dunn during wide angled shots and medium-close up shots. Even though he is seen talking and interacting with his family members and people at the hospital, the echoey silence intensifies his feelings of mental trauma at the hint that something special is going on with him.

Favourite Scene

This scene puts Dunn in the spotlight, letting go of his inhibitions and letting his powers show him what he is capable of. Price pushes him to stop fearing the unknown and Dunn ends up at a station where random, mundane-by-look people rush past him as he stands in between the crowd. As a few people nudge into him by accident, he starts to find out about the horrid lives they lead, realising that ‘looks can be deceiving’. This message is actually quite close to the life outside the film screen, with audiences feeling the weight of how everyone around them leads such different lives and one cannot even imagine what the other is going through.

The way in which the flashes into the secret lives of strangers is depicted is clever since the camera is pointing down from a high vantage point, a high-angle shot. This is a smart decision by the director as it gives the audience the feeling that they are spying on the character Dunn is looking at due to the CCTV set up of the camera filming. Moreover, other than having a wide shot showing the entire set up of the location to give the context of their wrongdoings, the high angle makes them seem inferior in Dunn’s eyes since they can choose to do the right thing but yet resort to harming others.

David Dunn is shown to be at the edge of reaching above his abilities and being completely vulnerable. He could choose to make the wrongs right and turn the criminals in or feel the weight of the world being such a frightening place that he tries to forget everything he sees. The audience is curious to know how Dunn would react to realising that he has got psychic powers and that before it was just a lucky guess or feeling that he’d have about the man carrying the gun or about someone having drugs in their possession. Dunn becomes self-aware, empowered and determined.the audience is reminded of Dunn’s good side since after finding out about his powers, the first thing he does is go after a man who claimed a strangers house as his own and tied up the people who actually live there. The audience knows that these strong powers are in the right hands, with someone who could make the city of Philadelphia a better place.

What would I do differently?

I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it’s ability to involve a viewer as well as the characters involved. It has a plotline that sets it out from the rest and is still enjoyable more than a decade later. Being an avid M. Night Shyamalan fan, I enjoyed exploring the pattern of production he has with character portrayal and story points.

If I were to make my own ‘Unbreakable’ I would have driven deeper into the powers that Dunn possesses and really show him tackling heavy obstacles that could really put his life in danger. The way in which the film is formed and structured, it seems as though ‘Unbreakable 2’ is a sequel we never got as an audience. Though however now, with Split being a brilliant success, Shyamalan’s third unofficial instalment in this series is set to release in January 2019, ‘Glass’, which focuses on Elijah Price and his storyline.