The Sixth Sense (1999) (SPOILERS)

I saw this on release just after Christmas 1999, while looking forward to an Ofsted inspection at my school. Nothing could be scarier!

I recall being unable to contain my sadness at the conclusion, the reveal, the twist which I only twigged seconds before it happened. Returning to it again yesterday, 26 years later, there seemed to me to be precious few clues where an innocent could understand sooner, which attests to the skill of the writer and director, M Night Shyamalan. Doubtless, there are smarter Alexs than me out there, so I'm not claiming that the whole was watertight, just that if you had got to the cinema without having been prepped that there was a Big Twist, and without being the kind of bore who has to beat the director (and everyone else) by claiming to have worked it out after five minutes, there is a sensitive film to enjoy with an outstanding, and perhaps slightly disturbing performance to applaud.

Hayley Joel Osment is superb as Cole, the young boy who is causing his mother and his school such concern that he becomes the patient of Malcolm Crowe, an award-winning psychologist, played by Bruce Willis. This is Bruce's opportunity to show that, playing second fiddle to his child co-star (Osment was 11 when the film was made), he could still convince in a role requiring restraint and self-doubt.

The film is shot with a sombre palette, and locations around the historic city of Philadelphia provide a sympathetic background. The whole seemed somehow drained of life, damp, drenched even, with the tears of the unhappy people the film is wholly populated with. Even the celebrations of Crowe and his wife, Anna, (Olivia Williams) at the receiving of an award for his work, are mute, and although there is a resolution at the end, Cole must still learn to deal with the dead people he sees with his sixth sense; and Malcolm knows he has lost his struggle to be reunited with his estranged wife.

Interestingly, the 'trick' Shyamalan plays on his audience depends on one of the central conventions of mainstream cinema: continuity editing. We are so accustomed to the way we absorb a narrative that we fill in the gaps between edits. So, we assume that when Crowe first comes to Cole's house, the reason that Cole's mother doesn't speak to him is that she has already hired him, explained the situation, and is simply allowing him room to get to know Cole without her interference. The biggest assumption is, of course, when the screen fades to black after Crowe has been shot and we next see a title - "the following fall" - and Crowe is watching Cole walking along the street.

The whole trick played on us depends on our accepting how continuity editing works. And in the case of Crowe's repeated attempts to open the door to the basement where he has his study, framing too. He tries the door handle, then reaches for his pocket. Fade to black. Later, we see him in the basement, doing research. We assume he retrieved the key and was able to enter. It's only when this happens for the final time that the frame has shifted and we see a table with books on, blocking the door. Even at that point, we might not get the significance as the story moves swiftly on while some in the audience might wonder why the door would be blocked if he regularly uses the basement. Why would his wife put that table there?

Films that opt to tell a story out of chronological order, such as in Citizen Kane, have long been a staple of cinema, but these were not intended to conceal information from the audience. Indeed, directors would use techniques to ensure that the audience is well-aware that the chronology is being tampered with. But films that choose to deliberately disrupt the assumptions of continuity editing to fool the audience have become an increasing part of mainstream cinema. For example, the following year's Memento (Dir Chris Nolan) takes to extremes, the whole idea of a narrative told out of sequence, with two parallel narratives, one shot in black and white in chronological order, and one shot in colour told in reverse order. Nolan's films are notable for their use of fluid chronology, often eschewing the techniques that would help the audience keep track of the narrative to create ambiguity about what we are seeing. Inception (2010) was criticised for its failure to help the audience, but the whole point was to ensure we doubted whether what we were seeing was dream or reality. 

Which is the very stuff of cinema.