M. Night Shyamalan’s Most Heartfelt Moment
If you haven’t seen The Sixth Sense, you should be aware that I am going to spoil it in this article. But even if you are one of the millions of people worldwide who haven’t seen the film yet still know what happens in the very final scene, I would recommend skipping this article and coming back to it after having seen the full movie.
I’m not here to talk about the famous ending, one of the most notable twists in cinema history. Instead, I’m here to talk about the emotional gut punch that comes just before the climactic reveal, a scene that may have single-handedly garnered the film multiple Oscar nominations — and set an unfair precedent for a young filmmaker to live up to for the rest of his (admittedly very mixed) career.
As was pointed out in an article by Medium writer Cole Haddon (the comment section of which led me to write this very piece), The Sixth Sense had more than just one twist when it was released to unsuspecting filmgoers. It may have been revealed in trailers for the movie that Haley Joel Osment’s Cole Sear can indeed see dead people. This of course makes sense from a marketing perspective, as Shyamalan was not a known name yet, and the studio wanted to ensure a hit by at least revealing the central premise of the film (which also offers a basic explanation of its enigmatic name). But in his piece, Haddon proposes a thought experiment, which is to watch the movie and imagine you haven’t viewed the trailer or read any spoilers at all. As there is very little mention of actual supernatural activity for a large portion of the movie, when Cole finally confides in his therapist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) and tells him what he’s experiencing, it hits like a freight train. Everything he could have been experiencing up until that point could have easily been written off as mental illness (with perhaps the exception of a superhuman ability to open cabinets very quickly).
In a pre-internet era, avoiding such spoilers actually wouldn’t have been a significant ask from a casual filmgoer. The Sixth Sense’s shocking reveals played a massive part in the film’s box office success, with its domestic gross barely dropping 6% from weekend to weekend for its first six weeks in theaters — a feat that has hardly been replicated since. Much like The Matrix (released in the same year) the mind-boggling revelations in Shyamalan’s screenplay helped get the word out that the film needed to be experienced in a theater. Personally, I was 7 years old when the R-rated film came out, so the “seeing dead people” part was spoiled for me far before I was able to watch it on VHS. In fact, Malcolm being a ghost was also spoiled for me, as when I finally got to watch the film with my friends a few years later, my father casually walked through the room and blurted out the ending when we were only 20 mins into it.
But revisiting the movie as an adult, the thing that really surprised me wasn’t a twist at all, it was the absolutely devastating performance from Toni Collette, who has since gone on to become one of my favorite actors. As much as I think the two male leads are doing some of their best work in The Sixth Sense, Collette is far and away the most impressive performer in this film in my opinion, and not just because she was only 26 years old when the movie hit theaters. This is the very beginning of Collette establishing herself as the all-time stressed out cinema mom, a run that has included such masterful performances as melodramatic matriarchs in the likes of About a Boy, Little Miss Sunshine, and of course, Hereditary.
Throughout the film we watch Collette’s Lynn Sear struggling with her son’s perceived illness, wondering whether he has been hurting himself, has been hurt by others, and most heartbreakingly, defending herself against accusations that she was the one to hurt him. But through it all, it is clear that Lynn loves Cole, even if she doesn’t understand what is tormenting him. The most crushing part of both Toni Collette and Haley Joel Osment’s performances is the fact that they can’t truly communicate. As Cole tells Malcolm early on, “I don’t tell her things. ’Cause she doesn’t look at me like everyone else, and I don’t want her to.”
The evolution of their relationship is crystalized in two scenes, which create an emotional backbone for the film that Shyamalan has never truly been able to replicate. The first is the scene with Cole and Lynn at dinner, shortly after Cole has revealed his secret to Malcolm, and the audience has begun to see the ghosts he has been experiencing this whole time. Cole has never been truly dishonest with his mom, but for the whole film he has been holding back on telling her exactly what is going on with him because he knows she can’t take it. She is still reeling from the death of her own mother, as well as the absence of Cole’s father, who abandoned the family. We see both of these things begin to truly break her at the dinner table, as first she angrily asks Cole to keep his father’s gloves off the table, and then begins to chastise him for repeatedly stealing her mother’s bee pendant. Cole refuses to outright lie and say that he is the one who has been stealing the pendant, but he also can’t bring himself to tell her that it’s the ghost of her own mother that keeps taking it. She angrily sends him off before he’s finished his dinner.
Lynn is obviously young for a mother, let alone a single, overworked mother of a child who is experiencing something she cannot begin to comprehend. The narrative begins to shift when Malcolm goes back to investigate an old case that has been haunting him, and realizes that the patient he wasn’t able to help could also see ghosts, just like Cole. Malcolm suggests to Cole that he tries listening to what the ghosts have to say, and this allows Cole to solve the mystery of Mischa Barton’s death. Now able to use his power for good, he is able to impart some wisdom upon Malcom that will allow him to also reach his own catharsis. And then we get that penultimate scene of the film, Cole and Lynn in the car. As soon as Cole says “I’m ready to to communicate with you now,” I begin to feel myself tearing up. No matter how many times I watch this movie, I am simply not prepared for the way in which Cole tells his mother about what he has been going through.
As he begins to explain that it’s the ghost of her mother that has been stealing the bee pendant, we see Toni Collette essentially go through all five stages of grief in a matter of minutes. First she is in shock (denial), and then she tells Cole what he is saying is “very wrong” and that he needs to stop (anger + bargaining). When Cole reveals the undeniable proof that he has been communicating with his grandmother by telling the story of Lynn’s dance performance, we watch her break into tears (depression). And then, Cole lets her know that Lynn makes her mother proud “every day”, and the two tearfully embrace (acceptance). Finally, his mother knows exactly what her son has been going through, and she knows that she has been a good mother to him after all. And then we all get to sob along with the two of them.
There are of course other extremely emotional moments in M. Night Shyamalan films. in Signs, the reveal of what happened to Graham to make him lose his faith is a particular wrenching scene, as is Casey’s backstory in Split. But these moments aren’t nearly as powerful as the Sixth Sense car scene, largely because as Shyamalan’s career has gone on, he has been unable to move away from the twists that came to become so synonymous with his name. The reveals in Signs and Split are both flashbacks that re-contextualize things for the audience in a shocking manner. They feel designed to make sure the audience thinks about the film differently upon a rewatch. While that doesn’t necessarily rob them of their impact, it’s a stark difference to the quiet bittersweetness that we experience with Cole talking to Lynn about her mother. There is a reveal happening in that moment, but it’s one character revealing something to another character, not just the screenplay revealing something to the audience. In turn, this allows the film to breathe more, and allows the performances to truly shine through. We aren’t as focused on trying to piece together the narrative as we are on watching two characters reach a mutual understanding of what has been keeping them apart for the whole film.
And because this scene is able to put such a neat little bow on Cole and Lynn’s arcs, the final twist of the film is able to land much harder. You think that you’ve witnessed the end of the story, and you suddenly begin to wonder why we’re watching Bruce Willis again. The central conflict of the movie has always felt like it’s been about Cole and his supernatural ability, so much so that we forgot about the whole thing where Malcolm getting shot by Donnie Wahlberg has driven a wedge in between him and his wife. Now that Cole has been able to make peace with his “sixth sense”, he is confident that he has been able to send Malcolm off to find his own closure, a closure that Malcolm didn’t know he needed, and that we the audience didn’t know either.
This is why The Sixth Sense received six Oscar nominations, including for Best Screenplay and Best Picture (although it won zero). It has lingered in the public consciousness as a ghost story with a shocking ending, but at its core it is a stunningly adult story about communication breakdowns between people who are unable to have difficult conversations. What I would give to go back in time and watch this film in theaters without having anything spoiled for me.
Bruce Willis is almost like the audience surrogate for the narrative, and it makes sense that we end on him finally saying goodbye to his wife. But Toni Collette is the secret weapon of the movie, the true emotional core. Her final scene is without a doubt the most emotionally resonant thing Shyamalan has ever written, brought to life by one of the best performers working today.
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