How about The Sixth Sense for success?
By Ervell E. Menezes

EVERYBODY'S talking about ‘The Sixth Sense’ and suddenly, almost overnight, the US-based Indian filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has become a celebrity who has been paid a record amount for his next film script. And because he’s busy working on his next film, he couldn’t accept the Columbia invitation to be in India for the opening of The Sixth Sense.

The Sixth Sense is all about ghosts. What is it that these spirits of the dead want? It is through eight-year-old Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) that they communicate but being young and unsure of himself he has to confide in his elders and finds an able ally in psychiatrist Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis). "They want help... they want me to do things for them," Cole tells Malcolm halfway through the film but it is the unusual, bizarre, yet cerebral way in which the subject of ghosts has been handled that makes The Sixth Sense such a big happening.

"Night’s insight into human behaviour and the human imagination is awe-inspiring. May be it’s a combination of his spiritual and mystical Indian roots and his purely American upbringing that gives him the ability to strike a delicate yet provocative balance between what’s real and what isn’t real, what’s tangible and what isn’t tangible," says producer Frank Marshall about the Indian filmmaker who is now the rage of Hollywood, nay even the whole film world.

Night Shyamalan himself refers to the film as "Ordinary People" meets The Exorcist and I think that’s an appropriate description. It’s a story with vulnerable characters to which an audience can relate... and audience that will not only enjoy it but will be surprised by its unique tale of terror." And that is precisely what it is.

For one thing it is far from sensational. It starts off rather low-key and though the doses of horror keep coming they are used judiciously, even eerily, like the 1960s film The Innocents (Deborah Kerr). No battering of the senses like The Exorcist or The Omen. No gimmickry. It is cerebral stuff, with Bruce Willis projecting a very different side of himself, the sensitive human being, not the action star or one-man army we’ve known him to be and those for those who’ve seen him in The Fifth Element (special effects all the way) it is a most welcome change.

"I was thinking you’re nice but you can’t help me," is among the early lines spoken by Cole to Dr Crowe. But gradually the relationship between the psychiatrist and the patient changes. Not surprisingly, it becomes a case of "psychiatrist, heal thyself", and because he is prepared to learn from the little boy, he gets deeper into this spirits thing. May be the ending is somewhat simplistic and the only weak point in the film but the fact that Shyamalan manages to keep the viewer engrossed in the goings-on is commendable. Not in a long while have we seen such a riveting horror film and once again, I repeat, it is cerebral horror.

Not that there are no stunning scenes. There are, in the true Hitchcockian style, but the intricate tapestry woven by the story is itself alluring and young Haley Joel Osment as the kid is simply superb. He brings out that mix between innocence and fear and for long he keeps it a secret. Till he finds a trusting ally in the psychiatrist.

The encounters with the "dead folk" are most effectively handled. They appear stealthily, almost fleetingly and this is probably the biggest asset of the film. If only it had a more powerful ending? As for Night Shyamalan, who has been tampering with the film medium from the age of 10, he knows how to do it. The casting is perfect. Toni Collette as Cole’s mother is perfect and is able to convey her angst, her helplessness in the matter and this finds expression in sudden bursts of anger. So is, to a lesser extent Olivia Williams as the psychiatrist’s wife.

It is the boy and the psychiatrist who form a strong bond and it is this duo that is able to delve deep into the recesses of the unknown. Shyamalan says he chose Philadelphia as the location not because he lives there but because it is so closely linked with American history. What’s more Shyamalan is a man with confidence. When he was editing his second film Wide Awake he said to his editor, "you know, I’m going to write a screenplay called The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis is going to star in it."

That’s precisely what happened. Sixth sense, I guess.

This feature was published on November 21, 1999