Unbreakable
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| Unbreakable | |
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| Directed by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Produced by | Barry Mendel Sam Mercer M. Night Shyamalan |
| Written by | M. Night Shyamalan |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Samuel L. Jackson Robin Wright Penn Spencer Treat Clark |
| Distributed by | Buena Vista International |
| Release date(s) | November 22, 2000 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $75,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
- This page refers to "Unbreakable" the film. For other uses, see Unbreakable (disambiguation).
Unbreakable is a 2000 film written, produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. The movie was inspired by the world of comic books and its interest in exploring 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". On online movie forums like Rotten Tomatoes, it has been compared to The Sixth Sense in that they share the same star (Willis) and have similarities in plot structure, including surprise endings.
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[edit] Origins
In a DVD bonus feature, Shyamalan noted that the film's script originally had a comic book's traditional three-part structure (the superhero's "birth", his or her struggles against general evil-doers, and the superhero's ultimate battle against the "arch enemy"). Finding the "birth" section more interesting than the remainder, he decided to base the entire movie around the idea.
A common myth is that 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. This was a misconception made by Bruce Willis. Shyamalan himself has stated that he never intended to make sequels.
[edit] Plot
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 counseling 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 pictorial 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 bone 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 (although it's revealed later he faked the injury). Price claims that the swimming incident 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 keeping his victim's family captive and living in their home. 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 lying 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. The next morning, David shows the newspaper article of his heroic act to his son, who believed in him all along. It is a touching scene for father and son.
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, 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). Elijah finishes his sentence saying, "Do you know how I knew?! It was the children...they called me Mr. Glass." The film ends with the caption that reads he was arrested and sent to an institute for the criminally insane.
[edit] Technique
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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 him in the reflection of a television screen. After grown-up Elijah begins his dealings with David, the mirror imagery is mostly replaced by shots depicting Elijah and David as symmetrical opposites. This technique also makes the images on screen seem like the squares of a comic strip.
A dark, blueish filter is 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".
[edit] 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 super villains, 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, Wally West, Susan Storm)
Other references:
- 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 speaks "basic English", a super villain speaks "learned (i.e., well-educated) English".
- Elijah engages in numerous monologues; many of these reveal, in part, the 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 had better not be masturbating to Japanese Manga. In a movie about a distinctly American form of comics (the superhero), this scene makes a slight jab at another popular genre of graphic fiction.
- One of the comics at Elijah's art show 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 a walking stick, but as Thor he possessed the power of an indestructible 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.
- In the end, the hero, rather than take on his arch-enemy, instead leads the authorities to him, and he is incarcerated in a mental health facility. This occurs many times in comics, especially where the hero has defeated lesser enemies himself but declares that the courts will deal with his nemesis (e.g. The Joker, Lex Luthor).
- David Dunn's powers
- Strong immune system, although two incidents reveal his weakness, water (drowning, pneumonia).
- His bones are "unbreakable", the exact opposite of Elijah's condition. He survives both a car crash and a train wreck "without a scratch", in the latter case as the only survivor. Although even with nearly unbreakable bones, he should have had bruises and cut at least.
- He has a form of super strength, able to lift weights of at least 350 pounds (in a deleted scene, he was shown benching 500 pounds). In a flashback sequence, he is able to tear a car's door off its hinges. He has to exert himself, rather than effortlessly lifting incredible weights (as Superman does), but the weight-lifting scene reveals that his limit 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.
- 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 shares Dunn's 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.
[edit] 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 turnstiles when the man in the camouflage 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 turnstiles.
- Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type I individuals have associated conditions that include blue sclera of the eyes and hearing loss. Samuel L. Jackson's character Elijah does not appear to have either of these conditions.
- In his debut song, "Through the Wire," Kanye West refers to the film in a line in the second verse: "Unbreakable, why you thought they called me Mr. Glass?"
- The film is listed on the MySpace tie-in page of Claire Bennet, the indestructible cheerleader character on NBC's Heroes.
- Immediately before discovering the train wreck on the news, Joseph is seen flipping through the channels and passing an episode of The Powerpuff Girls in which a woman is knocking several lamps off a table, shattering them.
[edit] External links
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| Praying with Anger • Wide Awake • The Sixth Sense • Unbreakable • Signs • The Village • Lady in the Water |
