Unbreakable (film)

Unbreakable
Directed by	M. Night Shyamalan
Written by	M. Night Shyamalan
Produced by	Barry Mendel Sam Mercer M. Night Shyamalan
Starring	Bruce Willis Samuel L. Jackson Robin Wright Penn Spencer Treat Clark
Distributed by	Buena Vista International
Release dates	November 22, 2000
Running time	106 min.
Language	English
Budget	$75,000,000

This page refers to "Unbreakable" the film. For other uses, see Unbreakable (disambiguation).

Unbreakable is a 2000 movie written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson.

Details

The movie Unbreakable explores the role that myth has in our civilization, and specifically explores the way that humans use comic books to explore mythic dimensions of the real world. The film works on a second level, for within the film itself comic books are in a real sense man's last link to an "ancient way of story-telling".

In DVD bonus features, Shyamalan claims he was in the process of writing a single movie using a comic-book three-part structure (the superhero's birth, their struggles against general evil-doers, and their ultimate battle against the "arch enemy"). However, he found the "birth" section far more interesting than the remainder and decided to base the entire movie around the idea.

Many have compared this film with The Sixth Sense because it shares the same writer, director, and star actor, contains the same type of plot structure, and ultimately builds to a surprise ending. The film was only a modest box-office success (likely due to the dark nature of the film), though critically acclaimed for its original and offbeat spin on the superhero mythos. Shyamalan himself considers the film a lesser effort and attributes the lack of commercial success to the rushed nature of its production and a lack of emotion, though many of the film's fans disagree, and claim that it is underrated. Shyamalan had planned to make a trilogy of this story: Unbreakable, Unbeatable, and Unstoppable, which would focus on the three parts of the above-mentioned format, but he instead chose to write and direct Signs, The Village, and Lady in the Water. As of 2006, however, he still hopes to make a sequel to Unbreakable to further show the protagonist's exploits.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Elijah Price (Jackson) is born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare disease in which the bones lack collagen of sufficient quality and/or quantity, and thus break very easily. He is even born with broken bones, as shown in the first scene of the movie, and later receives the nickname "Mr. Glass," due to his fragility. He lives his life searching for a reason for his own existence. During the movie, he theorizes that if he is at one end of a curve then perhaps there is somebody else quite opposite to him at the other end, someone with far greater than usual strengths.

Security guard David Dunn (Willis) is also searching for a meaning to his life. He gives up a promising American football career to be with Audrey, the girl he loved, but after their marriage and the birth of a son Joseph, he still feels an emptiness - that something is missing. It is revealed that he and Audrey are undergoing marriage counselling sessions, as both are still troubled about their nuptials and an accident in the past. After surviving a massive train wreck that kills 131 people (unharmed and as the only survivor), he is contacted by Price, who proposes to a disbelieving Dunn that he is, in fact, a modern day "superhero" (although the word is never used through the course of the film, except when referring to actual comic-book characters). Elijah theorizes that comic book superheroes are a modern manifestation of something ancient about humanity; a pictoral history similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, trying to record something long past. When David tries to ignore Elijah's theory, the dealer interferes with his family life by repeatedly stalking David and his wife, trying to get David to listen to him. David's son, Joseph, is convinced that what Elijah says is true, but Audrey believes that Elijah has several mental problems, due to his being in and out of the hospital and his recent fall that left him crippled.

After much distress among his family, David finally agrees to hear him out. Elijah believes that comic book heroes are an echo, mimicking pre-historic stories of human beings who truly had greater than normal strength and abilities. The first comic book heroes were closer to reality, but over time the medium became commercialized, and artists started to insert things which were outlandish and highly fictional. Elijah believes that Dunn is supernatural: that his immunity to illness and his experience with the train crash indicates that David has the strength that Elijah lacks. Dunn has only been sick once in his life. He is unable to swim, however, and there are several instances where he seems to have been harmed. In elementary school, he nearly died as a result of swimming. Another incident was when he nearly lost his wife while they were in university, in which after saving her from a car wreck, David had turned down football altogether citing an injury. Price claims that this is simply the exception to his powers: to balance out their increased abilities, all superheroes also possess a specific weakness. Dunn eventually begins to understand his hyperadvanced instinct, which reveals to him the immoral tendencies of those around him upon any physical touch.

As Dunn begins to understand his purpose in the world, he begins to feel whole again, and is able to renew his relationship with his wife and his son. This leads to David's first 'heroic act': going out wearing his "Security" poncho (which draws visual parallels to a "Superhero" in a cape and hood) at Elijah's encouragement to prove that he truly is something special. David walks through crowds in a Philadelphia train station, until his 'second sight' tells him that a janitor he has passed is a psychotic murderer who is living in his victims' home with his family captive. David follows him back to the house, where he finds the dead man. Upstairs, he releases the two tied-up daughters, and finds the mother in a separate room, apparently unconscious. David is ambushed by the serial killer, who throws David onto a tarp laying on top of a pool. The tarp begins to fall into the pool, exposing David to his weakness, water, and nearly killing him. At the last moment, he grabs the handle of a pool skimmer and is pulled up by the children he just saved. David then confronts the serial killer. David tries to choke him from behind, but the crazed serial killer slams him backwards repeatedly into a wall. David is "unbreakable", however, and not seriously harmed. He chokes the man to death and releases the mother, only to find that she was already dead.

In the final moments of the film, David attends a comic convention at Elijah's Limited Edition store. To his horror, he discovers that Price has caused several terrible disasters, including the train accident that opens the movie, in order to find someone who would miraculously survive as David did. The evidence is shown in blueprints of trains, buildings, and other areas, which showed their weakness, bomb-making kits, and other items. Price insists to Dunn that he performed these deeds only to find meaning in his life. He then justifies his actions by comparing his relationship with Dunn to that of an often repeated motif in superhero stories: that the hero and the villain are opposites, and often even friends at first. Before David turns his back on him, Elijah pleads with him to understand the feelings of loneliness and the supposed lack of purpose in life. Captions run over the final shot, saying that after leaving, David informed the police about Elijah (whose office is littered with newspaper clippings and evidence right in the open that he was responsible for the disasters), and Elijah is arrested and sent to an institute for the criminally insane. David goes on to save more lives with his powers, although we are not shown exactly who he becomes.

Trivia

• Like in his other movies, M. Night Shyamalan makes a cameo appearance. Here he appears as a suspected drug dealer attempting to enter the football stadium that David works at.
• The carnival scenes were shot at Sharswood school in South Philadelphia.
• The University City SEPTA Station, where Elijah falls down the stairs and breaks several bones, is portrayed as having turnstyles when the man in the camoflage jacket jumps over one, lifting his coat and revealing the pistol he tried to smuggle into the stadium. In fact Septa Regional Rail uses conductors and tickets; only SEPTA subway stops have turnstyles.

Technique

Mirror Imagery predominates in the first half of the movie. When Dunn is interrogated by the Doctor after the train crash, it is viewed through a mirror. When we see Elijah as a child for the first time post-birth, we see in the reflection of a television screen. The use of reflexive mirror imagery mostly stops after grown-up Elijah begins his dealings with David, indicating that the two are duplicates of each other. These shots generally are meant to reveal the symmetry between the two leading characters, as they are opposites. This technique also makes the images on screen seem like the squares of a comic strip. A dark, blueish filter is also used in many scenes, creating a subdued but unnerving atmosphere that matches the storyline. While most of the film is a deep, dark blue, certain scenes are shown in warmer colors to create contrast. These scenes involve David, whose world is much less bleak than Elijah's. Primary colors were sometimes added to give the sense of the flat, simple coloring of early comics, and characters who David senses as doing evil are often shown wearing vivid colors in contrast to other actors surrounding them.

Both the cinematography and dialogue of the film are presented in a manner suggesting the style of a comic book. Camera shots are long, with infrequent cuts and no abrupt changes in perspective. There is very little action during shots. When a character moves within a scene, they tend to hold one position for extended amounts of time to hint at the static illustrations of a graphic novel. Dialogue between characters is always segmented: when two characters converse, their speech never overlaps; they never interrupt each other. There is always a distinct pause between each line of dialogue, which suggests the speech balloons of a comic book. Each line of the script is separated by pauses, because it is in its own "balloon".

Comic book references

• As in comic books, the main characters have their identified color schemes:
  • David's clothes are green, and he is wearing a dark green hooded rain poncho on his first night out.
  • Elijah's clothes are purple (a favorite color of Samuel L. Jackson), a prominent color amongst supervillains, especially in the 1960s and 1970s (cf. Lex Luthor, Joker, Catwoman)
  • The serial killer's janitor uniform is bright orange.
  • Generally, anyone seen in one of David's 'visions' is wearing a bright color - a rapist in luminous green (unlike the darker, forest and khaki green that David is linked to), a hate crime thug in bright yellow, a drug dealer in blue, a thief in red and so forth.
• David and Elijah are shown to be each other's opposite in many ways, including their contrasting skin color, hair, class status as well as their physical makeup. David is all but invincible, while Elijah is extremely brittle. They are opposite in nearly every way except their reaction to water, which can kill either. They are on the same spectrum, just at different ends.
• As in many comic books, the hero's first and last names are alliterative (cf. Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, Scott Summers, Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, Reed Richards)
• When Joseph watches the television news report on the train wreck, the station logo (an encircled "4"), vaguely resembles the logo for the Fantastic Four comic books.
• The cover art for Elijah's first comic book is similar to that of Wolverine vs. Lobo.
• Elijah describes how the artwork of a villain features a slightly enlarged head and eyes. Elijah's head appears slightly larger than normal because of his hairstyle.
• The hero has an Achilles' heel-weakness (in David's case, water), like Superman being affected by Kryptonite.
• The superhero and the villain were once friends before they became arch enemies (cf. Superman and Lex Luthor, Mr. Fantastic and Dr. Doom, Spider-Man and Harry Osborn, Professor X and Magneto, Batman and Two-Face)
• A superhero uses "basic english" in speaking, a supervillain uses "learned (i.e., well-educated) english" in speaking.
• Elijah engages in numerous monologues; many of these reveal, in part, his violent plot he used to "discover" David.
• Before facing the murderer, David tilts his head so that the poncho's hood casts a shadow over his face. This can be likened to a hero putting on his full costume before fighting evil. The poncho also ceases to hide David's face when he is at risk of dying.
• In a scene taking place in a small comic book shop, the clerk tells Elijah that he better not be masturbating to Japanese Manga. As a movie about a distinctly American form of comics (the superhero) it makes a slight jab at another popular genre of graphic fiction.
• One of the comics at Elijah's artshow that we can clearly see is that of The Mighty Thor. Much like Elijah and David, Thor existed on two opposite sides of the spectrum. In his mortal identity of Donald Blake, Thor was frail and needed the use of walking stick, but as Thor he possessed the power of an indestructable god.
• The lead villain has a physical deformity, such as the scar on Dr. Doom's face, Lex Luthor's baldness, the Mole Man's mole-like appearance, or The Leader's enlarged head and green skin.

David Dunn's Powers

• He has never been sick except for two incidents which revealed his weakness, water (drowning, pneumonia).
• His tissues are far more resistant to damage and stress than equivalent normal human tissue. He survives both a car crash and a train wreck "without a scratch", himself being the only survivor of the later.
• He has tremendous strength, easily able to lift weights of at least 350 pounds. In a deleted scene he was show benching 500 pounds. In a flashback sequence, he is able to tear a car's door off its hinges. He has to exert himself and doesn't just effortlessly lift incredible weights (as Superman does), but in the weight lifting scene it is revealed that the functional limit of his strength is many times what he thought it was.
• He has the ability to tell if someone has done something bad if he comes in physical contact with him or her, a form of psychometry. This is explained in the film as an extremely developed form of instinct.
• Arguably, he has a version of invisibility (toned down in much the same way as all his other powers are more down to earth than comic book superheroes). This is seen in the train station, when David stands with his arms outstretched in the train station for some time, yet never draws any attention to himself. Though not truly invisible, of course, David avoids notice even when acting conspicuously.

Elijah Price's Powers

• Evil genius
• The exact opposite of the "spectrum" from David Dunn, he has a specific weakness caused by his bone disease that makes him extremely susceptible to physical harm.
• Elijah Price also shares the vulnerability to water. Unlike Dunn whose bones are too heavy for him to swim, Elijah's condition prevents him from being fit enough to swim.

See also

• Twist ending
• Pixies' "I've Been Tired" is played during the wheelchair crashing comic book store scene.

External links

• SENTRYMAN - Unbreakable Message Board
• M. Night Shyamalan - Unbreakable
• Unbreakable at IMDb
• Unbreakable at Rotten Tomatoes
• M. Night Shyamalan Fans - Unbreakable
• Analysis of Unbreakable