Methods of an auteur? The modern master of the clean, classy style of suspense filmmaking, M. Night Shyamalan, uses “traditional” genre thrills like ghost stories, comic book heroes, and monsters as the basis of his plots, yet giving only glimpses of the supernatural to capture and manipulate audiences’ emotions. He succeeds in applying suspense in his films without using excessive explicit content, rather focusing on the interpersonal relationships that allow the events to unfold.
To accompany his style, Shyamalan applies a number of principles to each film. For example, he keeps his pacing deliberately slow. His famous films The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village all contain slow, but emotional dialogue exchanges. The movies are more about dramatic scenes, not action scenes. This allows Shyamalan to explore character dynamics over plot dynamics, but at the same time, he is still able to keep the audience involved. When it comes to the supernatural ghosts and monsters, people are used to seeing action-packed scenes, all up-in-your-face experiences. Shyamalan goes a different way. He slowly builds up audiences’ anticipation, and then he reveals the truth. Like the way Cole reveals his secret in the hospital bed in The Sixth Sense; the way David accepts his powers in Unbreakable; the way the secret of Covington woods and its monster reveals. Audiences did not get the sensation of being scared out of their seat by the sudden spooks, nevertheless, they got the fulfillment of anticipation, of rambling through their head to search for the possible answer; the possible outcome, of the finally knowing the unknown. What can be better than the intellectual involvement? Another principle in Shyamalan’s films is the twist of the identity of the protagonist or he changes the story focus to another character. With The Sixth Sense, we watch a ghost story for nearly the entire film and are shocked to discover the hero is also a ghost. In Unbreakable, we watch a superhero origin story only to find out it is actually a story about a villain. In The Village, Shyamalan shifts the focus from Lucius to Ivy. By fatally injuring Lucius, Shyamalan changes the story plot. A supplementary part of Shyamalan’s films is the big ending. He leaves the emotional climax to the very end in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village. In The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan creates an emotional climax for Cole and Malcolm. For Cole, it is when he finally tells his mother about his secret and about the message from the grandmother. For Malcolm, it is not only realizing he is dead, but it is when he reconciles with his wife. In Unbreakable, David is horrified to find out that he is been an experiment of an insane villain, marking the emotional climax. As for The Village, the emotional climax is when the elders all agree to keep the secret going and when Ivy returns with the medicines from the modern world.
Even though each film has its fantastic ending, Shyamalan still leaves audience with curiosity; craving for more. Case in point would be the closing seconds of Unbreakable, when Elijah utters the words "They called me Mr. Glass," and the film cuts to black. That is great that villain has a name, but what about the hero? What is going go happen to David? Is he going to continue his heroic actions? Does he still believe he is unbreakable in light of the truth about Elijah? In similarity, The Sixth Sense and The Village too leave a lot of questions unanswered. Is Malcolm still going to be friends with Cole? Is Cole going to be scared if he knows Malcolm is a ghost? Is Lucius going to survive? Does Ivy know that she is living in the modern world? Shyamalan is definitely a good director, but as for being an auteur, he is not there yet. Although he has had a consistent style in his films, people are more familiar with the actors instead of his “signature”. At least I’m more familiar with the actors. The first thing it come to my mind when people mention The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable is Bruce Willis instead of Shyamalan. Further more, not many of his films are classified as classics despite the success in box-office; maybe The Sixth Sense can be viewed as a classic years later. However, as for the time being, I think for most people, they would only recognize a Shyamalan film when they see Shyamalan in the movie. More films needs to be made before people can efficiently recognize Shyamalan as an auteur. Filmography
Shyamalan, M. Night (Director) and Marshall, F. and Kennedy, K. et. al. (Producers). (1999). The Sixth Sense. Hollywood Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment: Hollywood, CA.
Shyamalan, M. Night (Director) and Marshall, F. and Mercer, S. (Producers). (2000). Unbreakable. Touchstone Pictures: Burbank, CA.
Shyamalan, M. Night (Director) and Mercer, S. and Rudin, S. (Producers). (2004). The Village. Touchstone Pictures: Burbank, CA.