In 1999, the third author’s project of the beginning director in an instant became a real sensation, providing him with considerable income and the status of a promising visionary. The detective drama with elements of mysticism “The Sixth Sense” received extremely laudatory reviews.
Irrefutable triumph
A decent box office of $ 379.3 million, which at times covered the initial production budget of the tape, six nominations for the Oscar and inclusion in the Cannes festival program irrevocably approved M. Knight Shyamalan as the best debutant of the season. In addition to the mass of positive reviews, the Sixth Sense film has a high IMDb rating (8.10) and occupies 74th position in the list of 250 best films. For home video enthusiasts, the picture in 2000 was the most demanded, about 80 million reviewed it. According to the American Film Institute, the unhappy child’s phrase “I see dead people” was included in the list of 100 best phrases in the history of cinema and took the honorable 44th place.
Briefly about the plot
At the center of the story is a practicing psychiatrist specializing in child psychiatry, Malcolm Crowe, who has been confronted with an extraordinary case in his practice. His patient is the nine-year-old Cole, who supposedly sees the ghosts of the dead. Spirits unleash their wrath on a child, creating an oppressive fear due to the fact that they once died a violent death. Malcolm understands that, as a psychiatrist, he can’t help the boy, but cannot leave him to his fate, he is trying to find the key, the root cause of everything that happens. In most cases, reviews of the movie Sixth Sense contain a similar description of the plot, as it does not contain spoilers.
Not thanks, but contrary
The triumph of the Sixth Sense was called by critics a complete surprise. Indeed, it seems that everything is against the creators of the picture. The narrative is leisurely, if not painful, most of the timing consists of dialogues between the doctor and the patient. The picture does not contain striking locations, since the lion's share of the budget went to the fee of the inimitable Bruce Willis, who played the role of Malcolm Crowe. Many fans of the action movie star did not appreciate his abrupt change of image, it is surprising and unusual to see Bruce in the image of a quiet bald psychiatrist. Add to this visualization exclusively in gloomy tones, a few truly frightening scenes more inherent in horror. It turns out a project that cinemas are traditionally reluctant to provide the best show times in their repertoire.
But, contrary to all that has been said, reviews of The Sixth Sense confirm his tremendous success. And all thanks to the clever, extraordinary, subtle and filigree prescribed script that encourages the beholder to spend almost two hours in alarming anticipation of a stunning denouement. Since then, by the way, many directors have adopted Shyamalan’s original methods, so his contemporaries do not seem fresh and inspiring to his contemporaries, but in 1999 the film impressed many. The director later repeatedly tried to apply these maneuvers in his subsequent work, but each attempt ended in failure, and he leaned toward the most obvious and therefore banal decision.
A successful experiment with a mystical component
Despite all the horror and gloom created in the frame, many filmmakers, in their reviews and reviews of The Sixth Sense, argue that in essence this is a kind picture of the fear of the inevitable end that came earlier than we would like, the complexities of human relationships, friendship and responsiveness. Heroes, often talking about death, according to the director’s idea, do not scare the viewer, but help to understand this burning topic. Filmmakers often embark on experiments with otherworldly themes, but few of them manage to film a project without unnecessary pretentiousness and excessive pathos. The “Sixth Sense” is reviewed by movie experts as a smart project that you periodically want to review. The director himself considers the picture a kind of symbiosis of the drama “Ordinary People” (1980) and the classic horror film “The Exorcist” (1973).
Spectacular hype
Sometimes individual viewers in reviews of The Sixth Sense compared with another 1999 hit with the ultra-low-budget Blair Witch Project, emphasizing that the brainchild of Shyamalan stands out for its design. Although the work of D. Mirik and E. Sanchez is the opposite of Knight's hit, it announces from the very beginning the death of the three main characters, and everything they shot in the forest and so did not appear in the frame is presented as documentary chronicles from the scene. But the Sixth Sense, in the opinion of the reviewers, does not require the existence of specially invented accompanying Internet legends or exponential silence, attached to a fundamental secret. According to the statement of many inhabitants, the audience rush around the tape can be compared more likely with the “Ghost” with the participation of Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. However, Jerry Zucker's project was definitely a melodrama with elements of science fiction, comedy and mysticism, and the fruit of inspiration by Knight Shyamalan is a mystical psychodrama.
Important value
Essential for understanding the picture is that it was invented and filmed by a person who is a representative of oriental culture, worldview and philosophy. There, the border between the real and the other world is not defined radically strictly and not so frightening, and people from the world of the dead are able to coexist with the living, sometimes even enter into close relationships. Therefore, as filmmakers emphasize in their reviews of The Sixth Sense, the American public, pretty tired of waiting for the end of the world and the onset of the millennium, perceived the clever and quiet project of the "mysterious Indian" as a kind of revelation that the dead also hurt. And the living, endowed with paranormal abilities, are doubly painful to experience, besides their own sufferings, the posthumous sorrows of restless souls.
Awards
The Sixth Sense project was nominated for an Oscar in six categories, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (2 performers), Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing. Unfortunately, he was not able to receive awards, because among other applicants there are such masterpieces as American Beauty and The Green Mile.
At the same time, the film was awarded the MTV Channel, Golden Globe and the British Academy Award. Moreover, M. Night Shyamalan received a prize to them. David Lean for special achievements in directing, and for the script he was awarded the prestigious Nebula Association of Fiction and Fantasy Authors.
Some skeptical film enthusiasts have stated that for mainstream cinema, hundreds of millions of rental dollars are, of course, more important than prizes. But no stranger’s sarcastic remarks, gnawing and later creative failures of the director himself can not cancel the artistic success of The Sixth Sense - a film successful and relevant for all time.